The AEgIS antihydrogen gravity experiment

The experimental program of the AEgIS experiment at CERN’s AD complex aims to perform the first measurement of the gravitational interaction of antimatter, initially to a precision of about 1%, to ascertain the veracity of Einstein’s Weak Equivalence Principle for antimatter. As gravity is very much weaker than electromagnetic forces, such an experiment can only be done using neutral antimatter. The antihydrogen atoms also need to be very cold for the effects of gravity to be visible above the noise of thermal motion. This makes the experiment very challenging and has necessitated the introduction of several new techniques into the experimental field of antihydrogen studies, such as pulsed formation of antihydrogen via 3-body recombination with excited state positronium and the subsequent acceleration of the formed antihydrogen using electric gradients (Stark acceleration). The gravity measurement itself will be performed using a classical Moire deflectometer. Here we report on the present state of the experiment and the prospects for the near future.     

Cold antihydrogen atoms

Cold antihydrogen atoms have been produced recently by mixing trapped antiprotons with cold positrons. The efficiency is remarkable: more than 10% of the antiprotons form antihydrogen. Future spectroscopy of antihydrogen has the potential to provide new extremely precise tests of the fundamental symmetry between matter and antimatter. In addition, cold antihydrogen atoms might permit the first direct experiments investigating antimatter gravity. A novel method to measure the gravitational acceleration of antimatter using ultra-cold antihydrogen atoms is proposed. PACS 04.80.Cc; 32.80.Pj; 36.10.-k     

Towards antihydrogen confinement with the ALPHA antihydrogen trap

ALPHA is an international project that has recently begun experimentation at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility. The primary goal of ALPHA is stable trapping of cold antihydrogen atoms with the ultimate goal of precise spectroscopic comparisons with hydrogen. We discuss the status of the ALPHA project and the prospects for antihydrogen trapping.     

AD performance and its extension towards ELENA

The CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator (AD) is devoted to special experiments with low energy antiprotons. A main topic is the antihydrogen production with the present aim to produce these antimatter atoms with such low energy that they can be trapped in a magnetic gradient field. First very convincing results have been published recently by ALPHA. Still, it appears to be cumbersome, time consuming and ineffective when collecting the needed large numbers and high densities of antiproton clouds with the present AD. Both the effectiveness and the availability for additional experiments at this unique facility would drastically increase, if the antiproton beam of presently 5 MeV kinetic energy would be reduced by an additional decelerator to something like 100 keV. Such a facility ”ELENA”, as an abbreviation for Extra Low ENergy Antiproton Ring and first discussed in 1982 for LEAR, was freshly proposed with a substantial new design and revised layout and is presently under consideration. ELENA will increase the number of useful antiprotons by up to two orders of magnitude and will allow to serve up to four experiments in parallel.     

AEGIS at CERN: Measuring Antihydrogen Fall

The main goal of the AEGIS experiment at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator is testing fundamental laws such as the weak equivalence principle (WEP) and the CPT symmetry. In the first phase of AEGIS, a beam of antihydrogen will be formed whose fall in the gravitational field is measured in a Moirè deflectometer; this will constitute the first test of the WEP with antimatter.     

Alternative method for reconstruction of antihydrogen annihilation vertices

The ALPHA experiment, located at CERN, aims to compare the properties of antihydrogen atoms with those of hydrogen atoms. The neutral antihydrogen atoms are trapped using an octupole magnetic trap. The trap region is surrounded by a three layered silicon detector used to reconstruct the antiproton annihilation vertices. This paper describes a method we have devised that can be used for reconstructing annihilation vertices with a good resolution and is more efficient than the standard method currently used for the same purpose.     

Background-free observation of cold antihydrogen with field-ionization analysis of its states

A background-free observation of cold antihydrogen atoms is made using field ionization followed by antiproton storage, a detection method that provides the first experimental information about antihydrogen atomic states. More antihydrogen atoms can be field ionized in an hour than all the antimatter atoms that have been previously reported, and the production rate per incident high energy antiproton is higher than ever observed. The high rate and the high Rydberg states suggest that the antihydrogen is formed via three-body recombination.     

反氢和反原子

自从狄立预言反粒子的存在后，虽然人们已经找到了几乎每个粒子的反粒子，但几代物理学家苦苦寻找着由反粒子组成的以原子，１９９６年１月ＣＥＲＮ宣布制成反氢原子，打开了通向反物质世界的大门子，引起轰动，文章叙述这一重大发现的物理背景，报道了上述发现，并展望由此开辟的崭新领域。     

Antihydrogen synthesis by the reaction of antiprotons with excited state positronium atoms

Aspects of the possible reactions of trapped antiprotons with excited state positronium atoms to form antihydrogen are discussed. Conditions are identified whereby the antihydrogen produced may be suitable for capture in a neutral trap. A discussion is given of possible use of antihydrogen to test the quantization of electric charge involving precision comparisons of hydrogen and antihydrogen (Rydberg constants), and proton and antiproton cyclotron frequencies.     

Towards antihydrogen trapping and spectroscopy at ALPHA

Spectroscopy of antihydrogen has the potential to yield high-precision tests of the CPT theorem and shed light on the matter-antimatter imbalance in the Universe. The ALPHA antihydrogen trap at CERN??s Antiproton Decelerator aims to prepare a sample of antihydrogen atoms confined in an octupole-based Ioffe trap and to measure the frequency of several atomic transitions. We describe our techniques to directly measure the antiproton temperature and a new technique to cool them to below 10 K. We also show how our unique position-sensitive annihilation detector provides us with a highly sensitive method of identifying antiproton annihilations and effectively rejecting the cosmic-ray background.     

Microwave-plasma interactions studied via mode diagnostics in ALPHA

The goal of the ALPHA experiment is the production, trapping and spectroscopy of antihydrogen. A direct comparison of the ground state hyperfine spectra in hydrogen and antihydrogen has the potential to be a high-precision test of CPT symmetry. We present a novel method for measuring the strength of a microwave field for hyperfine spectroscopy in a Penning trap. This method incorporates a non-destructive plasma diagnostic system based on electrostatic modes within an electron plasma. We also show how this technique can be used to measure the cyclotron resonance of the electron plasma, which can potentially serve as a non-destructive measurement of plasma temperature.     

Theory of X-ray grazing incidence reflection in the presence of nuclear resonance excitation

ATHENA, one of the three approved experiments at the new facility for low energy antiprotons (AD) at CERN, has the primary goal to test CPT invariance by comparing the atomic energy levels of antihydrogen to those of hydrogen. The extended experimental program also contains studies on differences in gravitational acceleration of antimatter and matter. The production of antihydrogen atoms and their spectral response to laser light will be monitored by a sophisticated detector for the end products of antiproton and positron annihilations. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Antihydrogen production and precision experiments. The ATHENA collaboration

The study of CPT invariance with the highest achievable precision in all particle sectors is of fundamental importance for physics. Equally important is the question of the gravitational acceleration of antimatter. In recent years, impressive progress has been achieved at the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) at CERN in capturing antiprotons in specially designed Penning traps, in cooling them to energies of a few milli-electron volts, and in storing them for hours in a small volume of space. Positrons have been accumulated in large numbers in similar traps, and low energy positron or positronium beams have been generated. Finally, steady progress has been made in trapping and cooling neutral atoms. Thus the ingredients to form antihydrogen at rest are at hand. We propose to investigate the different methods to form antihydrogen at low energy, and to utilize the best of these methods to capture a number of antihydrogen atoms sufficient for spectroscopic studies in a magnetostatic trap. Once antihydrogen atoms have been captured at low energy, spectroscopic methods can be applied to interrogate their atomic structure with extremely high precision and compare it to its normal matter counterpart, the hydrogen atom. Especially the 1S-2S transition, with a lifetime of the excited state of 122 ms and thereby a natural linewidth of 5 parts in 10¹⁶, offers in principle the possibility to directly compare matter and antimatter properties at a level of 1 part in 10¹⁸. Additionally, comparison of the gravitational masses of hydrogen and antihydrogen, using either ballistic or spectroscopic methods, can provide direct experimental tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle for antimatter at a high precision. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A possible gravity measurement with antihydrogen

A neutral probe such as antihydrogen offers appealing experimental advantages, compared to a charged probe such as antiproton, for a measurement of the gravitational behaviour of antimatter. The feasibility of this approach is preliminarily investigated. A direct extension of the sextupolar ring technique used by Paul is not feasible but the use of a straight sextupole seems to be promising.     

Does antimatter emit a new light?

Contemporary theories of antimatter have a number of insufficiencies which stimulated the recent construction of the new isodual theory based on a certain anti-isomorphic map of all (classical and quantum) formulations of matter called isoduality. In this note we show that the isodual theory predicts that antimatter emits a new light, called isodual light, which can be distinguished from the ordinary light emitted by matter via gravitational interactions (only). In particular, the isodual theory predicts that all stable antiparticles such as the isodual photon, the positron and the antiproton experience antigravity in the field of matter (defined as the reversal of the sign of the curvature tensor). The antihydrogen atom is therefore predicted to: experience antigravity in the field of Earth; emit the isodual photon; and have the same spectroscopy of the hydrogen atom, although subjected to an anti-isomorphic isodual map. In this note we also show that the isodual theory predicts that bound states of elementary particles and antiparticles (such as the positronium) experience ordinary gravitation in both fields of matter and antimatter, thus bypassing known objections against antigravity. A number of intriguing and fundamental, open theoretical and experimental problems of “the new physics of antimatter” are pointed out. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Particle manipulation techniques in AEgIS

The AEgIS experiment (http://aegis.web.cern.ch) will measure the gravitational acceleration g of antihydrogen. Once performed this could be the first direct test of the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter. In the AEgIS experiment a beam of antihydrogen will travel horizontally along a path of about 1 m trough a moir?? deflectometer followed by a position sensitive detector. The g value will be obtained measuring the vertical displacement of the annihilation patterns. Before producing the beam, several tasks have to be performed mainly involving positron and electron plasma manipulation and particles cooling in Malmberg-Penning traps. The AEgIS experiment is currently under construction at CERN, meanwhile several tests involving particle manipulation and particle cooling are in progress. In this report some experimental results involving diocotron manipulation of plasma will be presented.     

反物质的存在及反氢的制造

本文简述了人类寻找反物质的历程；目前产生反氢原子的方法及利用反物质的美好前景．     

Cold and stable antimatter for fundamental physics

The field of cold antimatter physics has rapidly developed in the last 20 years, overlapping with the period of the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) at CERN. The central subjects are CPT symmetry tests and Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) tests. Various groundbreaking techniques have been developed and are still in progress such as to cool antiprotons and positrons down to extremely low temperature, to manipulate antihydrogen atoms, to construct extremely high-precision Penning traps, etc. The precisions of the antiproton and proton magnetic moments have improved by six orders of magnitude, and also laser spectroscopy of antihydrogen has been realized and reached a relative precision of 2 × 10⁻¹² during the AD time. Antiprotonic helium laser spectroscopy, which started during the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) time, has reached a relative precision of 8 × 10⁻¹⁰. Three collaborations joined the WEP tests inventing various unique approaches. An additional new post-decelerator, Extra Low ENergy Antiproton ring (ELENA), has been constructed and will be ready in 2021, which will provide 10–100 times more cold antiprotons to each experiment. A new era of the cold antimatter physics will emerge soon including the transport of antiprotons to other facilities.     

Antimatter gravity studies with interferometry

There has never been a direct measurement of the gravitational force on antimatter. This paper describes a possible measurement of this force by measuring the phase shift of neutral antimatter in a transmission-grating interferometer caused by the Earth’s gravitational field. This experiment avoids the severe problem of shielding stray electromagnetic fields necessary for making a gravity measurement with charged particles, and also avoids the need to trap neutral particles. The neutral antimatter for this experiment could be either antihydrogen, positronium, or antineutrons. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.