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We have every reason to believe that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced in the early universe. Moreover, theory predicts that the laws of physics make no distinc- tion between the two. In this light, the fact that the observable universe is overwhelmingly dominated by matter is inexplicable. ALPHA is an international project located at CERN involving approximately 40 physi- cists from 15 different institutions in 7 countries. The primary goal of the collaboration is to study the antihydrogen atom at the highest level of precision possible, and thereby enable comparisons between hydrogen and antihydrogen. Through these comparisons it hopes to improve our understanding of the distinction between matter and antimatter, and perhaps shed some light on the puzzle of why we live in a matter dominated universe. The hyperfine energy intervals of ground-state hydrogen and antihydrogen represent an opportunity for a precision comparison. A discrepancy between the energy levels of these two atomic sys- tems would indicate a major revolution in physics, and in our understanding of the universe. This thesis describes and interprets the first proof-of-principle spectroscopic measure- ments performed on magnetically trapped antihydrogen atoms. The experiments were per- formed by the ALPHA collaboration using microwave radiation tuned to induce transitions between hyperfine levels of ground state antihydrogen atoms. Our observations confirm that positron spin resonance transitions between hyperfine levels of ground state antihydro- gen are consistent with expectations for hydrogen to within 4 parts in 103. The hyperfine splitting of ground state antihydrogen atoms is also constrained to 1420 ± 85 MHz.

Recently, antihydrogen atoms were trapped at CERN in a magnetic minimum (minimum-B) trap formed by superconducting octupole and mirror magnet coils. The trapped antiatoms were detected by rapidly turning off these magnets, thereby eliminating the magnetic minimum and releasing any antiatoms contained in the trap. Once released, these antiatoms quickly hit the trap wall, whereupon the positrons and antiprotons in the antiatoms annihilated. The antiproton annihilations produce easily detected signals; we used these signals to prove that we trapped antihydrogen. However, our technique could be confounded by mirror-trapped antiprotons, which would produce seemingly-identical annihilation signals upon hitting the trap wall. In this paper, we discuss possible sources of mirror-trapped antiprotons and show that antihydrogen and antiprotons can be readily distinguished, often with the aid of applied electric fields, by analyzing the annihilation locations and times. We further discuss the general properties of antiproton and antihydrogen trajectories in this magnetic geometry, and reconstruct the antihydrogen energy distribution from the measured annihilation time history., Comment: 17 figures

Sources of positrons and antiprotons that are currently used for the formationof antihydrogen with low kinetic energies are reviewed, mostly in the context of the ALPHA collaboration and its predecessor ATHENA. The experiments were undertaken at the Antiproton Decelerator facility, which is located at CERN. Operations performed on the clouds of antiparticles to facilitate their mixing to produce antihydrogen are described. These include accumulation, cooling and manipulation. The formation of antihydrogen and some of the characteristics of the anti-atoms that are created are discussed. Prospects for trapping antihydrogen in a magnetic minimum trap, as envisaged by the ALPHA collaboration, are reviewed.

ALPHA is an experiment at CERN, whose ultimate goal is to perform a precise test of CPT symmetry with trapped antihydrogen atoms. After reviewing the motivations, we discuss our recent progress toward the initial goal of stable trapping of antihydrogen, with some emphasis on particle detection techniques., Comment: Invited talk presented at the Fifth Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry, Bloomington, Indiana, June 28-July 2, 2010

We report the application of evaporative cooling to clouds of trapped antiprotons, resulting in plasmas with measured temperature as low as 9~K. We have modeled the evaporation process for charged particles using appropriate rate equations. Good agreement between experiment and theory is observed, permitting prediction of cooling efficiency in future experiments. The technique opens up new possibilities for cooling of trapped ions and is of particular interest in antiproton physics, where a precise \emph{CPT} test on trapped antihydrogen is a long-standing goal., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures