[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Colloquium today at 14:00

TRIUMF Seminars triumf-seminars at lists.triumf.ca
Thu Nov 19 05:00:02 PST 2015


Date/Time: Thu 2015-11-19 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium          

Speaker:   Jeffrey Hangst (Aarhus University (ALPHA spokesperson))

Title:     Physics with Antihydrogen: the ALPHA experiment at CERN

Abstract: It has been just over 100 years since Niels Bohr proposed his famous model for the hydrogen atom.  It is thus very exciting that we are now able to experimentally study antihydrogen - the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen. The Standard Model of fundamental particles and interactions requires that hydrogen and antihydrogen have the same spectrum.  At CERN in Geneva, the ALPHA collaboration is working to test this requirement by performing direct spectroscopic measurements on trapped atoms of antihydrogen. I will discuss an important development along the road to antihydrogen spectroscopy: magnetically trapped antihydrogen.  In November of 2010 we reported [1] the first trapping of antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic multipole trap.  The atoms must be produced with an energy - in temperature units - of less than 0.5 K in order to be trapped.  Subsequently, we have shown that trapped antihydrogen can be stored [2] for up to 1000 s, and we have performed the first resonant quantum interaction experiments with anti-atoms [3].  We have also recently demonstrated a new technique5 to study the gravitational behaviour of antihydrogen atoms in free-fall, and put the first limits on the electrical neutrality of antihydrogen [5,6].  I will discuss the many developments necessary to realise and study trapped antihydrogen, and I will discuss the future of this rapidly emerging field of study – including the new Canadian initiative to study the gravitational behaviour of antimatter.   The proposed ALPHA-g apparatus, funded by a new, large grant from the CFI, is currently being designed and hopes to make the first measurements of antihydrogen in free-fall in the gravitational field of the Earth.  
	And of course, I will tell some tales of Art’s role in all of this


[1] Andresen, G.B. et al., Trapped Antihydrogen, Nature, 468, 673 (2010).
[2] Andresen, G. B. et al. Confinement of antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds. Nature Physics 7, 558 (2011).
[3] Amole, C. et al., Resonant quantum transitions in trapped antihydrogen atoms, Nature 483, 439 (2012).
[4] Amole, C. et al., Description and first application of a new technique to measure the gravitational mass of antihydrogen, Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2787 (2013).
[5] Amole, C. et al., An experimental limit on the charge of antihydrogen, Nature Communications 5, 3955 (2014).
[6] Ahmadi, M. et al., An improved limit on the charge of antihydrogen from stochastic acceleration, to be published in Nature.




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