If an antihydrogen atom annihilate with a heavier atom of matter, will the remaining nucleus of the heavier atom be disassembled into individual protons and neutrons?
If so, is this considered to be a process which convert(regenerate) hydrogen from heavier elements? Is it allowed by the laws of thermodynamics?
An antihydrogen beam is a very recent achievement in particle physics
The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. In a paper published today in Nature Communications (link is external), the ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small.
Such a beam hitting nuclei , the individual antihydrogen will just annihilate with one proton or neutron of a nucleus and a lot of energy will be released. There will be fission of the original nucleus into nuclear fragments because of the very high energy released (~1800 MeV ) in the annihilation with respect to the binding energies of nuclei ( order of ten MeV).
There will be protons flying around, which will finally trap an electron and become hydrogen, but it will be a hugely inefficient way of generating hydrogen.
