Speaker
Description
The production of cold antihydrogen atoms at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) has opened up the possibility to perform direct measurements of the Earth's gravitational acceleration on antimatter bodies. This is the main goal of the AEgIS collaboration: to measure the value of g using a pulsed source of cold horizontally travelling antihydrogen via a moiré deflectometer/Talbot-Lau interferometer. The first milestone of pulsed production of antihydrogen [1] using a resonant charge-exchange reaction between cold trapped antiprotons and Rydberg positronium (or Ps, the atomic bound state of a positron and an electron) atoms is presented. The outlook in enhancing the intensity of the pulsed antihydrogen source thanks to the 100 keV ELENA decelerator antiproton beam is presented, with a view to first gravitational experiments using a pulsed beam of antihydrogen.
Further physics directions under development in AEgIS encompassing also nuclear physics, and relying on similar pulsed interactions between antiprotons and Rydberg atoms, will also be discussed.
[1] C. Amsler et al. (The AEgIS collaboration), Pulsed production of antihydrogen, Commun. Phys. 4, 19 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-020-00494-z
