Featured Faculty - Paul W. Percival

Paul W. Percival (Simon Fraser University)
Professor, Physical Chemistry
Percival Group Website

Research Area: Muonium Chemistry and its applications to H atom kinetics, organic free radicals and chemistry in supercritical water.

Muonium (Mu) is the exotic atom consisting of a single electron and a positive muon. From a chemical point of view, muonium is a light isotope of hydrogen; its mass is 1/9 that of H. Our experimental program is conducted at the TRIUMF accelerator facility (see also SFU TRIUMF), one of the few places in the world where high intensity muon beams are available. The muon lifetime is short (2.2 µs), and measurements involve particle physics, fast electronics and computers. However, the experimental techniques muon spin rotation (µSR), muon level-crossing resonance (µLCR) and rf-µSR, all have close parallels in conventional magnetic resonance (NMR and ESR).

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