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arXiv:hep-ex/0406074

Production of Cold Antihydrogen with ATHENA for Fundamental Studies

ATHENA Collaboration, A. Kellerbauer, Amoretti, M., C. Amsler, G. Bonomi, Paul David Bowe, C. Canali, C. Carraro, Claudio Lenz Cesar, M. Charlton, M. Doser, A. Fontana, M. Fujiwara, R. Funakoshi, P. Genova, Jeff S. Hangst, R. Hayano, Johnson, I., L. V. Jørgensen, Vittorio Lagomarsino, Rolf Landua, Evandro Lodi Rizzini, M. M. Macri, N. Madsen, Giulio Manuzio, Daniel Mitchard, P. Montagna, H.S. Pruys, C. Regenfus, Alberto Rotondi, G. Testera, A. Variola, L. Venturelli, Dirk Peter van der Werf, Y. Yamazaki, Nicola Zurlo

Published Jun 26, 2004• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Since the beginning of operations of the CERN Antiproton Decelerator in July 2000, the successful deceleration, storage and manipulation of antiprotons has led to remarkable progress in the production of antimatter. The ATHENA Collaboration were the first to create and detect cold antihydrogen in 2002, and we can today produce large enough amounts of antiatoms to study their properties as well as the parameters that govern their production rate.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.hep-ex/0406074

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Since the beginning of operations of the CERN Antiproton Decelerator in July 2000, the successful deceleration, storage and manipulation of antiprotons has led to remarkable progress in the production of antimatter. The ATHENA Collaboration were the first to create and detect cold antihydrogen in 2002, and we can today produce large enough amounts of antiatoms to study their properties as well as the parameters that govern their production rate.
In 2002, the ATHENA experiment was the first to produce large amounts of antihydrogen atoms at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD). In this review article, we collect and discuss all the relevant results of the experiment: antiproton and positron cooling and their recombination dynamics in the nested Penning trap, the methods used to unambiguously identify the antiatoms as well as the protonium background, the dependence of the antihydrogen formation on mixing time and temperature. An attempt to interpret the results in terms of the two-body and three-body formation reactions, taking into account the complicated nested-trap dynamics, is also made. The relevance of the ATHENA results on future experiments is discussed, together with a short overview of the current antimatter physics at the AD.
The production and study of cold antihydrogen will require the manipulation of dense and cold, single component plasmas of antiprotons and positrons. The undertaking will build upon the experience of the nonneutral plasma physics community. Annihilations of the antimatter particles in the plasmas can be imaged, offering unique diagnostic opportunities not available to this community when electrons and protons are used. The techniques developed by our TRAP collaboration to capture and cool antiprotons will certainly be used by our expanded ATRAP collaboration, and by the competing ATHENA Collaboration, both working at the nearly completed AD facility of CERN. We recently demonstrated a new techniques for accumulating cold positrons directly into a cryogenic vacuum system. The closest we have come to low energy antihydrogen so far is to confine cold positrons and cold antiprotons within the same trap structure and vacuum container. Finally, we mention that stored electrons have been cooled to 70 mK, the first time that elementary particles have been cooled below 4 K. In such an apparatus it should be possible to study highly magnetized plasmas of electrons or positrons at this new low temperature.
Antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of the hydrogen atom, can be formed by mixing cold samples of antiprotons and positrons. In 2002 the ATHENA collaboration succeeded in the first production of cold antihydrogen. By observing and imaging the annihilation products of the neutral, non‐confined, antihydrogen atoms annihilating on the walls of the trap we can observe the production in quasi‐real‐time and study the dynamics of the formation mechanism. The formation mechanism strongly influences the final state of the formed antihydrogen atoms, important for future spectroscopic comparison with hydrogen. This paper briefly summarizes the current understanding of the antihydrogen formation in ATHENA.
Only our ATRAP Collaboration is yet able to accumulate and store 4.2 K antiprotons and positrons. The antiprotons come initially from the new Antiproton Decelerator facility at CERN. Good control of such cold antimatter plasmas is key to aspirations to produce and study antihydrogen atoms that are cold enough to confine by their magnetic moments. In the closest approach to cold antihydrogen realized to date, the cold positrons have been used to cool antiprotons, the first time that positron cooling has ever been observed. The Penning-loffe trap, one possibility for simultaneously confining antihydrogen and the cold ingredients from which it is formed, is introduced and discussed.