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Subject: Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen


I want my antimatter cigarette lighter, please!


http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/01/antimatter-experiment-produces-first-beam-antihydrogen


Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen

The ASACUSA experiment at CERN (Image: Yasunori Yamakazi )

The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in
producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. In a paper published today in
Nature Communications, the ASACUSA collaboration reports the
unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream
of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic
fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. This result
is a significant step towards precise hyperfine spectroscopy of
antihydrogen atoms.

Primordial antimatter has so far never been observed in the universe,
and its absence remains a major scientific enigma. Nevertheless, it is
possible to produce significant amounts of antihydrogen in experiments
at CERN by mixing antielectrons (positrons) and low energy antiprotons
produced by the Antiproton Decelerator.

The spectra of hydrogen and antihydrogen are predicted to be
identical, so any tiny difference between them would immediately open
a window to new physics, and could help in solving the antimatter
mystery. With its single proton accompanied by just one electron,
hydrogen is the simplest existing atom, and one of the most precisely
investigated and best understood systems in modern physics. Thus
comparisons of hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms constitute one of the
best ways to perform highly precise tests of matter/antimatter
symmetry.

Matter and antimatter annihilate immediately when they meet, so aside
from creating antihydrogen, one of the key challenges for physicists
is to keep antiatoms away from ordinary matter. To do so, experiments
take advantage of antihydrogenAs magnetic properties (which are
similar to hydrogenAs) and use very strong non-uniform magnetic fields
to trap antiatoms long enough to study them. However, the strong
magnetic field gradients degrade the spectroscopic properties of the
(anti)atoms. To allow for clean high-resolution spectroscopy, the
ASACUSA collaboration developed an innovative set-up to transfer
antihydrogen atoms to a region where they can be studied in flight,
far from the strong magnetic field.

"Antihydrogen atoms having no charge, it was a big challenge to
transport them from their trap. Our results are very promising for
high-precision studies of antihydrogen atoms, particularly the
hyperfine structure, one of the two best known spectroscopic
properties of hydrogen. Its measurement in antihydrogen will allow the
most sensitive test of matter/antimatter symmetry. We are looking
forward to restarting this summer with an even more improved set-up,"
says Yasunori Yamazaki of RIKEN, Japan, a team leader of the ASACUSA
collaboration. The next step for the ASACUSA experiment will be to
optimize the intensity and kinetic energy of antihydrogen beams, and
to understand better their quantum state.

Progress with antimatter experiments at CERN has been accelerating in
recent years. In 2011, the ALPHA experiment announced trapping of
antihydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds and reported observation of
hyperfine transitions of trapped antiatoms in 2012. In 2013, the ATRAP
experiment announced the first direct measurement of the antiprotonAs
magnetic moment with a fractional precision of 4.4 parts in a million.

Read the paper: "A source of antihydrogen for in-flight hyperfine
spectroscopy" u Nature Communications

    Frantais

Posted by Cian O'Luanaigh on 21 Jan 2014. Last updated 21 Jan 2014,
17.36. 
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