We briefly review the recent studies of the behavior of composite systems in magnetic field. The hydrogen atom is chosen to demonstrate the new results which may be experimentally tested. Possible applications to physics of antihydrogen are mentioned.
A theoretical comparison of the behavior of the antihydrogen (H) and hydrogen (H) atoms in external electric and magnetic fields is made. It is shown that observable differences arise in the spectroscopic properties of H and H atoms in parallel electric and magnetic fields of the order of 475 V∕cm and 0.12 T, respectively.
One possible route for a precision test of the CPT theorem is to perform spectroscopic measurements on the antihydrogen atom and compare the results with those from hydrogen. We present a review of the existing theoretical and computational treatments of atomic processes important for understanding the experiments to make and trap the antihydrogen atom. The emphasis of this review is on the behaviour and properties of the charged species in these devices (electrons, positrons and antiprotons) and the properties of the antihydrogen that can be formed.
Performing measurements of the properties of antihydrogen, the bound state of an antiproton and a positron, and comparing the results with those for ordinary hydrogen, has long been seen as a route to test some of the fundamental principles of physics. There has been much experimental progress in this direction in recent years, and antihydrogen is now routinely created and trapped and a range of exciting measurements probing the foundations of modern physics are planned or underway. In this contribution we review the techniques developed to facilitate the capture and manipulation of positrons and antiprotons, along with procedures to bring them together to create antihydrogen. Once formed, the antihydrogen has been detected by its destruction via annihilation or field ionization, and aspects of the methodologies involved are summarized. Magnetic minimum neutral atom traps have been employed to allow some of the antihydrogen created to be held for considerable periods. We describe such devices, and their implementation, along with the cusp magnetic trap used to produce the first evidence for a low-energy beam of antihydrogen. The experiments performed to date on antihydrogen are discussed, including the first observation of a resonant quantum transition and the analyses that have yielded a limit on the electrical neutrality of the anti-atom and placed crude bounds on its gravitational behaviour. Our review concludes with an outlook, including the new ELENA extension to the antiproton decelerator facility at CERN, together with summaries of how we envisage the major threads of antihydrogen physics will progress in the coming years.
The creation of cold antihydrogen atoms by the controlled combination of positrons and antiprotons has opened up a new window on fundamental physics. More recently, techniques have been developed that allow some antihydrogen atoms to be created at low enough kinetic energies that they can be held inside magnetic minimum neutral atom traps. With confinement times of many minutes possible, it has become feasible to perform experiments to probe the properties of the antiatom for the first time. We review the experimental progress in this area, outline some of the motivation for studying basic aspects of antimatter physics and provide an outlook of where we might expect this field to go in the coming years.