My question is loaded with assumptions so to minimize them, I would like to ask it with respect to an electron and anti-electron annihilating.
When I think of annihilation, I think of electron and positron turning into energy where the total energy represents the combined masses plus kinetic energy each particle had prior to the collision and annihilation (Assumption 1).
But, doesn't the field of each charged particle also have an energy content and does this energy content of the charged particle field show up in the final energy? I have never seen this though, only the sum of the mass energy. (Assumption 2 possibly).
Also, how is it that the masses annihilate if they are not ANTI to each other. Mass has no opposite like charge does (or other things). Does the annihilation of the charges also somehow annihilate the masses and if this is the case, that would require energy so this energy should show up somewhere. Or is there some other opposite "thing" that results in annihilation of mass?
Physicists used to think that electron mass was actually the inertia of moving charge in a field (or something like that). Is there some kind of connection between mass and charge such that charge annihilation is also mass annihilation?
Best Answer
Here is the elementary particle table from which all others are built up , the standard model of particle physics.
Which shows the conserved quantum numbers that characterize the particles (columns and rows have quantum numbers assigned too) plus the measured masses. The quantum numbers have to "annihilate" to have an annihilation event, i.e. they should become 0 after annihilation. Mass is not a quantum number , it is a "length" in the energy momentum vector of the particles. Conservation of quantum numbers in interactions allow the mass to remain invariant. If quantum numbers are annihilated there is no constraint on the total energy momentum vector other than energy conservation, and the products allow that.
Here is a Feynman diagram of e+e- annihilation
There is no extra energy except the four vector of each incoming lepton. Charge is just a number counting attribute here.
Here is e+e- annihilation when the energies are large enough to create a muon pair
and a more complicated one into b bbar jets
In all these the quantum numbers annihilate on the left and new quantum numbers from 0 create pairs with oposite quantum numbers, according to the probabilities for the interaction at that energy.
In a nutshell: it is the quantum numbers that become annihilated/0 , freeing the energy momentum fourvectors to display their creativity :)