Category: Publication Content Type
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On the Dynamics of Adiabatically Cooled Antihydrogen in an Octupole-Based Ioffe-Pritchard Magnetic Trap
On the Dynamics of Adiabatically Cooled Antihydrogen in an Octupole-Based Ioffe-Pritchard Magnetic Trap Antihydrogen is now routinely formed in ALPHA by combination of antiproton and positron plasmas. Formed anti-atoms with energy <∼0.5 K are trapped in an octupole- based Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap. Reducing trapped antihydrogen energy is expected to increase precision in experiments that measure
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Sympathetically Laser-Cooled Positron Plasmas for Antihydrogen Formation
Sympathetically Laser-Cooled Positron Plasmas for Antihydrogen Formation Answering the question of why we live in a matter-dominated universe is of great interest to contemporary physicists, as the Standard Model of Particle Physics predicts that matter and antimatter should only ever be produced in equal parts. Antihydrogen is a good candidate for searches for asymmetries between
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Optimization of Antiproton Capture and Delivery for the ALPHA Antihydrogen Experiment
Optimization of Antiproton Capture and Delivery for the ALPHA Antihydrogen Experiment The ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) collaboration at CERN is testing Charge-Parity-Time (CPT) symmetry through precise measurements with antihydrogen atoms and in the future will measure antihydrogen's free fall acceleration in Earth's gravitational field. The antihydrogen atoms are created by slowly merging cold plasmas
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Sympathetic cooling of positrons to cryogenic temperatures for antihydrogen production
Sympathetic cooling of positrons to cryogenic temperatures for antihydrogen production The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, predicted by Dirac in 1931 and discovered by Anderson in 1933, plays a key role in many scientific and everyday endeavours. Notably, the positron is a constituent of antihydrogen, the only long-lived neutral antimatter bound state that can
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On the formation of antihydrogen beams using travelling optical lattices
On the formation of antihydrogen beams using travelling optical lattices The production of beams of antihydrogen atoms using the dipole force provided by a travelling optical lattice to accelerate a sample of the anti-atoms held in a magnetic gradient atom trap is investigated. By considering current and near-future antihydrogen trapping capabilities we find that useful
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Laser cooling of antihydrogen atoms
Laser cooling of antihydrogen atoms The photon—the quantum excitation of the electromagnetic field—is massless but carries momentum. A photon can therefore exert a force on an object upon collision. Slowing the translational motion of atoms and ions by application of such a force, known as laser cooling, was first demonstrated 40 years ago. It revolutionized
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Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometry at low temperature with application to antimatter gravity experiments by ALPHA
Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometry at low temperature with application to antimatter gravity experiments by ALPHA The Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP) has never been directly examined with an antimatter test body. To address this, ALPHA is planning to measure the Earth’s gravitational field using antihydrogen atoms as test masses. The experiment calls for the careful
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The ALPHA-g Antihydrogen Gravity Magnet System
The ALPHA-g Antihydrogen Gravity Magnet System The ALPHA-g experiment at CERN aims to perform the first-ever precision measurement of the weight of antimatter, using antihydrogen atoms confined in a magnetic trap. In the measurement, anti-atoms are allowed to escape through either a lower or an upper port in the trap, the up-down balance of which
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Investigation of the fine structure of antihydrogen
Investigation of the fine structure of antihydrogen At the historic Shelter Island Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in 1947, Willis Lamb reported an unexpected feature in the fine structure of atomic hydrogen: a separation of the 2S1/2 and 2P1/2 states. The observation of this separation, now known as the Lamb shift, marked an
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Design and Commissioning of Beamlines for the ALPHA Antihydrogen Experiment
Design and Commissioning of Beamlines for the ALPHA Antihydrogen Experiment One of the greatest problems facing modern physics is the apparent asymmetry between matter and antimatter. While the standard model of particle physics predicts that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced following the Big Bang, astronomical observations have revealed that our universe contains