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So what’s stopping us from being able to convert energy to mass with a particle accelerator? Shouldn’t it be possible to get a particle of equivalent mass-energy to the energy concentrated by an accelerator? So like amp up an electron to 106 MeV and get a muon-on-demand?

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Well, muons are made by getting electrons or other particles up to high speeds and then crashing them into stationary targets or counterrotating beams. But you have to create muon-antimuon pairs, so that requires at least 212 MeV in theory and much more in practice because of energy lost to heat, etc. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/SpecialROW032808MERIT.html

Per google, you have to have a collision because of the law of conservation of momentum otherwise won’t allow for pair production. It’s an open question how we get a universe of matter out of seemingly only producing mass energy in matter/anti-matter symmetry. Sounds like a sure Nobel prize for that one, too.

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