Speaker
Description
3D Simulation studies of mixed plasma confinement at AEgIS
Bharat Singh Rawat 1,2,3, Narender Kumar1,2, Benjamin Riena ̈cker1,3, Carsten P Welsch1,2,3
and
The AEgIS Collaboration3
1 Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, United Kingdom.
2 The Cockcroft Institute, Daresbury, Warrington, WA44AD,UK.
3 AEgIS Collaboration, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.
Abstract
The AEgIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry and Spectroscopy) project, based at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility, has undergone significant enhancements, capitalizing on the increased quantity of colder antiprotons made available by the new Extra Low Energy Antiproton Ring (ELENA) decelerator. These improvements aim to create a horizontal pulsed beam of antihydrogen atoms and enable a direct investigation into the impact of gravity. This experiment seeks to probe the Weak Equivalence Principle for antimatter.
The AEgIS experiment involves a trap comprising circular electrodes set within both a 5T and a 1T axial magnetic field. The 5T field serves the purpose of capturing cold antiprotons, while the 1T field facilitates the production of antihydrogen. In order to maximize the anti-hydrogen formation, it is crucial to have a detailed understanding of the properties of trapped antiprotons, which can be achieved by realistic 3D simulation studies in for the dynamics of particle confinement. Previous studies indicated that antiprotons exhibit greater stability in a shallower potential well. In this work, we examine the dynamics of antiprotons by varying the outer electrode potentials while maintaining constant potentials at the inner electrodes of the electrostatic trap, utilizing a Particle-In-Cell (PIC) solver in CST studio. We extended the studies on the temporal evolution of a mixed plasma generated with the introduction of electrons inside the trap along with the antiprotons by observing the effect of their initial properties: initial density, temperature and number of macro-particles. Additionally, we provide an overview of the results obtained for temperature and profile evolution for electrons and antiproton using a rotating wall electrode.Finally, we summarize our plans to develop a full digital twin of the AEgIS experiment over the next two years, providing valuable insights into the parameters required for optimized experiments.
Funding: This work is supported by EPSRC under grant agreement: EP/X014851/1.
