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Towards antihydrogen trapping and spectroscopy at ALPHA

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Abstract

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.

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Butler, E., Andresen, G.B., Ashkezari, M.D. et al. Towards antihydrogen trapping and spectroscopy at ALPHA. Hyperfine Interact 199, 39–48 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-011-0299-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-011-0299-3

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