More on matter and anti-matter

Question

1.) Does every particle that has rest mass also have an anti-particle with which it would annihilate?

2.) Does annihilation only occur between like particles? For example what happens if a antineutron (anti u, anti d, anti d) collides with a proton (uud)? What happens if a positron collides with a proton?

3.) Since the Tevatron accelerates antiprotons is this more difficult to handle and dump?

4.) I've read about WIMP annihilation detection. Why would one assume there is any different proportion of WIMPS to anti-WIMPS than as is for non-WIMP matter (where there is far more matter than anti-matter).

Answer 1

1) Yes - for charged particles and some neutral particles. But there are so called Majorana neutral particles that has no antiparticles (neutral pion or eta-meson, for example). In other words Majorana particle is its own antiparticle.

2) At low energies proton annihilates with antineutron like proton with antiproton - mainly into neutral and charged pions (charge should be conserved). Positron is not annihilate with a proton. They have the same charge.

Answer 2

For 1) Yes for particles in the standard model scheme.

For 2) You have to figure it out from the SM scheme, linked above and the energies involved.

For 3) It is more difficult to create and handle an anti proton beam as well as to build up a sufficient number of antiprotons in the beam. Dumping is the same for both beams.

For 4)It depends on your model, and how one assumes the WIMPs appear during the cooling after the big bang. It is reasonable to assume that the same CP violation that created the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter holds for WIMPS too.