Confinement of a Large Number of Antiprotons and Production of an Ultraslow Antiproton Beam
N. Kuroda, H. A. Torii, K. Yoshiki Franzén, Ziming Wang, S. Yoneda, M. Inoue, M. Hori, Bertalan Juhász, D. Horváth, H. Higaki, A. Mohri, J. A. Eades, Ken-Ichiro Komaki, Y. Yamazaki
We have used a radio frequency quadrupole decelerator to decelerate antiprotons emerging from the CERN Antiproton Decelerator from MeV- to keV-scale energy, and collected five decelerated pulses in a multiring trap. Some 5 x 10(6) antiprotons were stacked in this way. Cooling of the trapped antiprotons by a simultaneously trapped electron plasma was studied nondestructively via shifts in plasma mode frequencies. We have also demonstrated the first step in extracting a 10-500 eV antiproton beam from the trap.
We have used a radio frequency quadrupole decelerator to decelerate antiprotons emerging from the CERN Antiproton Decelerator from MeV- to keV-scale energy, and collected five decelerated pulses in a multiring trap. Some 5 x 10(6) antiprotons were stacked in this way. Cooling of the trapped antiprotons by a simultaneously trapped electron plasma was studied nondestructively via shifts in plasma mode frequencies. We have also demonstrated the first step in extracting a 10-500 eV antiproton beam from the trap.
Radial compression of a proton cloud was performed in a multiring trap which was designed to trap and cool a large number of antiprotons for the production of low-energy ( 10-1000 eV ) antiproton beams. The resonance frequency for the radial compression was almost constant from 3 x 10(5) to 3 x 10(6) protons. The collision process of the trapped protons was also investigated to estimate the energy of the protons inside the trap. This technique will be applied to the ASACUSA experiment at the antiproton decelerator, CERN, to extract ultraslow antiprotons with good emittance.
We have recently succeeded in decelerating and confining millions of antiprotons, 50 times more efficiently than conventional methods, in an electromagnetic trap. These antiprotons were cooled by preloaded electron plasma to an energy below an electronvolt. They were then extracted out of the magnetic field of 2.5 T and transported typically at 250 eV along a beamline, designed for efficient transport at 10–1000 eV. This unique beam from our apparatus named MUSASHI opens up a new field of atomic and nuclear physics probed by ultra‐slow antiprotons.In this paper, the whole experimental setup and procedure will be overviewed: deceleration, capture, cooling and extraction of antiprotons will be discussed in detail, including technical description of diagnostic devices.
Antiproton, the antiparticle of proton, is a unique projectile in the study of atomic collision physics, which can be treated theoretically either as a `negative proton' or a `heavy electron'. Atomic capture of an antiproton will result in formation of a highly excited exotic atom. Antiprotonic helium atom has been studied intensively by means of precision laser spectroscopy, which has led to a stringent determination of antiproton mass and charge to a level of ppb. Comparison of these values with those of proton gives one of the best tests of CPT invariance, the most fundamental symmetry in physics. However, the dynamic processes of antiproton capture remain unclarified, except for some indirect information given by those optical and X-ray observations. With an aim to produce an antiproton beam at atomic-physics energies for `pure' collision experiments, we have so far developed techniques to decelerate, cool and confine antiprotons in vacuo, using a sequential combination of the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) at CERN, a Radio-Frequency Quadrupole Decelerator (RFQD), and an electromagnetic trap. Our recent success in stable extraction of monoenergetic ultra-slow antiprotons, about 3×105 in number available every 5 minutes, has opened up the possibility to study ionization and atomic capture processes between an antiproton thus provided as a beam and an atom prepared in the form of a supersonic gas-jet target, at an unprecedented low energy from 10 eV to 1 keV under the single-collision condition. Our design and strategy of the cross-beam experiments are discussed.
Ultra slow mono-energetic antiproton beams are under preparation combining novel techniques to decelerate antiprotons with an RFQD (Radio Frequency Quadrupole Decelerator), to trap, cool, and compress in an electromagnetic trap, and finally to extract as an ultra slow mono-energetic beam. This unique beam will make it possible to study the ionization processes around adiabatic energy regions, channeling, stopping power, antiprotonic atom formation processes under single collision conditions, to prepare metastable antiprotonic atoms such as p̄p, p̄He+, p̄He++, p̄Li+ in vacuum, and to make high precision laser spectroscopy of them. This project named ASACUSA (Atomic Spectroscopy And Collisions Using Slow Antiprotons) is expected to open a new physics regime in antimatter science under well controlled conditions.
Recently, slow and ultra‐slow antiprotons are now available, which will open a new field of research in atomic physics as well as in related fields. In realizing this, the combination of an RFQD (Radio Frequency Quadrupole Decelerator) and a large multi‐ring trap (MRT) installed in a super‐conducting solenoid has been employed. Several million antiprotons have already been accumulated, and a mono‐energetic antiproton beam of 10 eV has been extracted and transported through a specially designed beam line. A couple of basic experiments which get feasible by the developments of ultra slow antiproton beam are discussed, which include ionization and antiprotonic atom formation processes and also to study spectroscopic nature of various meta‐stable antiprotonic atoms under single collision conditions. A so‐called cusp trap configuration is also discussed, which could for the first time synthesize intense spin‐polarized antihydrogen beams. At the same time, it could trap antihydrogen atoms for a macroscopic time.