Speaker
Description
The comparison of matter and antimatter provides one of the most sensitive tests of fundamental physics, yet until recently the gravitational behavior of antimatter had never been directly observed. For charged antimatter particles, gravitational forces are dwarfed by electromagnetic effects, making such measurements impractical. Antihydrogen—the electrically neutral bound state of an antiproton and a positron—overcomes this limitation and can be routinely produced, trapped, and studied by the ALPHA collaboration at CERN.
While ALPHA was originally designed for precision laser spectroscopy of antihydrogen, the dedicated vertical apparatus ALPHA-g was commissioned to enable measurements of gravitational effects. In this talk, I will present the first experimental observation of the influence of gravity on antihydrogen atoms [1], together with a detailed discussion of systematic studies of the magnetic field based on electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) magnetometry. These measurements are essential for controlling and characterizing the dominant non-gravitational forces acting on trapped antihydrogen.
I will conclude with an update on the current performance of ALPHA-g and an outlook on future experimental programs aimed at improving the precision of antimatter gravity measurements.
- E. K. Anderson et al., “Observation of the effect of gravity on the motion of antimatter,” Nature 621, 716–722 (2023).
| Keyword-1 | Antimatter |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Gravity |