Manipulation of antiprotons, positrons and other charged particles

Manipulation of antiprotons, positrons and other charged particles

In ALPHA, charged particles are trapped using a Penning-Malmberg trap. The most commonly trapped particles in our trap are the antiproton and the positron - the two ingredients to produce antihydrogen. Antihydrogen is electrically neutral, so it cannot be confined with the electric fields used to confine the charged positrons and antiprotons. Instead we use an ‘Ioffe-Pritchard trap’.