To my understanding, positronium has an average lifespan of around 140 ns before decaying, but can the positronium atom be “split” into its constituent particles, say with a strong magnetic field, before annihilating?
1 Answer
The lifetime of positronium depends on whether it is in the singlet or triplet state (para- or ortho-positronium). The former has a lifetime of about 125 ps, the latter, as you stated, around 142 ns. source: wikipedia
The binding energy can be calculated to be about 6.8 eV - so a well-aimed photon should be able to split positronium. Experiments to measure hyperfine splitting have been reported - this suggests that the EM interactions of positronium behave as expected.