Search

Some experimental limits on the annihilation cross sections σ ann of antiprotons on carbon, palladium, and platinum targets were determined at the previously unexplored kinetic energy region E ≈ 125 keV. Information on σ ann at such low antiproton energies is important in understanding the dynamics of the annihilation process, and provides useful data for models that attempt to describe the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe by assuming the existence of islands of antimatter concentration.

In order to test CPT symmetry between antihydrogen and its counterpart hydrogen, the ASACUSA collaboration plans to perform high precision microwave spectroscopy of ground-state hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen atom in-flight. We have developed an apparatus (“cusp trap”) which consists of a superconducting anti-Helmholtz coil and multiple ring electrodes. For the preparation of slow antiprotons and positrons, Penning- Malmberg type traps were utilized. The spectrometer line was positioned downstream of the cusp trap. At the end of the beamline, an antihydrogen beam detector was located, which comprises an inorganic Bismuth Germanium Oxide (BGO) single-crystal scintillator housed in a vacuum duct and surrounding plastic scintillators. A significant fraction of antihydrogen atoms flowing out the cusp trap were detected.

Systematic measurements of the annihilation cross sections of low energy antinucleons were performed at CERN in the 80's and 90's. However the antiproton data on medium-heavy and heavy nuclear targets are scarce. The ASACUSA Collaboration at CERN has measured the antiproton annihilation cross section on carbon at 5.3 MeV: the value is (1.73 ± 0.25) barn. The result is compared with the antineutron experimental data and with the theoretical previsions.

The antinucleon-nuclei annihilation cross sections at low energies were systematically measured at CERN in the 80’s and 90’s with the LEAR facility and later with the Antiproton Decelerator. Unfortunately only few data exist for very low energy antiprotons (p

The interaction of very low energy antiprotons (ps) and antineutrons (ns) with nuclei is interesting for its influence on both fundamental cosmology and nuclear physics. Measuring the annihilation cross section of antimatter on matter can help in solving the universe matter-antimatter puzzle and could give relevant hints in the definition of strong interaction model parameters as well. The ASACUSA collaboration recently measured the antiproton-carbon annihilation cross section at 5.3 MeV of kinetic energy of the incoming antiproton. The experimental apparatus consisted in a vacuum chamber containing thin foils (~0.7-1 μm) of carbon crossed by a bunched beam of antiprotons from the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD). The fraction of antiprotons annihilating on the target nucleons gives origin to charged pions which can be detected and counted by segmented scintillators placed outside the chamber. This work describes the experimental details of the apparatus and the technique to perform the cross section measurements.

We developed an antihydrogen beam detector for the microwave spectroscopy of the antihydrogen hyperfine splitting. The detector consists of a position sensitive BGO calorimeter and a hodoscope. We report test experiments for the position sensitive readout from a non-segmented BGO crystal., Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton Physics (LEAP2016), ISBN:978-4-89027-125-2

We report the progress of the H¯ beam production experiment and recent developments of the double cusp trap to improve of the beam intensity of the H¯ atomic beams, the ASACUSA Micromegas tracker to monitoring the antihydrogen synthesis and the antihydrogen beam detector., JPS Conference Proceedings, 18, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton Physics (LEAP2016), ISBN:978-4-89027-125-2

A simple rate-equation description of the heating and cooling of antiparticle clouds under conditions typical of those found in antihydrogen formation experiments is developed and analyzed. We include single-particle collisional, radiative, and cloud expansion effects and, from the modeling calculations, identify typical cooling phenomena and trends and relate these to the underlying physics. Some general rules of thumb of use to experimenters are derived.

The aim of the ASACUSA-CUSP experiment is to form a beam of antihydrogen atoms for in-flight precision spectroscopic measurements. This is performed by trapping and mixing antiprotons and positrons in a common nested-well potential, which is sitting in a double-cusp magnetic field with minimum-B field configuration. We have built a tracking detector, the ASACUSA Micromegas Tracker (AMT) [1], to monitor and resolve annihilations on-axis from annihilations on the trapping electrode walls of the experiment, which latter is a general signature of antihydrogen formation. Data taken during the summer of 2015 is presented in order to demonstrate the first performance of the AMT detector. In particular, data from on-axis trapping and slow extraction of antiprotons is used to illustrate the vertex reconstruction capability of the detector., JPS Conference Proceedings, 18, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton Physics (LEAP2016), ISBN:978-4-89027-125-2

The study of the antiproton ( $\bar {p}$ ) annihilation cross section on nuclei at low energies (eV-MeV region) has implications for fundamental cosmology as well as for nuclear physics. Concerning the former, different models try to explain the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe assuming the existence of the so-called “islands” where antinucleon-nucleon annihilations occur in the border region (Cohen et al. Astrophys. J. 495, 539–549, 1998), while, from the nuclear physics point of view, the annihilation process is a valuable tool to evaluate the neutron/proton ratio in order to probe the external region of the nucleus (Gupta et al. Nucl. Phys. B 70(3), 414–424, 1974). The existing data of antinucleon-nucleon (or -nucleus) annihilation cross-sections are mainly confined to energies above ≈1 MeV, while the cross section measured at LEAR in the 80’s-90’s (mostly with light targets Agnello et al. Phys. Lett. B 256, 349–353, 1991; Bertin et al. Phys. Lett. B 369, 77–85, 1996; Bertin et al. Phys. Lett. B 414, 220–228, 1997; Zenoni et al. Phys. Lett. B 461, 405–412, 1999; Bianconi et al. Phys. Lett. B 481, 194–198, 2000; Bianconi et al. Phys. Lett. B 492, 254–258, 2000) showed an unexpected behaviour for energies below 1 MeV (Bianconi et al. Phys. Lett. B 483, 353–359, 2000; Bianconi et al. Phys. Rev. C 62, 014611-7, 2000; Batty et al. Nucl. Phys. A 689, 721–740, 2001). The results showed a saturation with the atomic mass number against the A 2/3 trend which is observed for higher energies (being A the target mass number). The ASACUSA collaboration at CERN recently measured antiproton annihilation cross section on different kinds of nuclei with a $\bar {p}$ kinetic energy of 5.3 MeV (Bianconi et al. Phys. Lett. B 704, 461–466, 2011; Corradini et al. Nucl. Instr. Methods A 711, 12–20, 2013). Such results proved compatibility with the black-disk model with the Coulomb correction. But till now experimental difficulties prevented the investigation at energies below ≈1 MeV. In 2012, the 100 keV region has been investigated for the first time (Aghai-Khozani et al. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 127, 125–128, 2012). We present here the first preliminary results of this experiment.

The antinucleon-nuclei annihilation cross section at very low energy has been measured at the LEAR facility (CERN) during the 80's and 90's and recently at the Antiproton Decelerator. The results have raised some interesting questions that still need answers. The ASACUSA collaboration performed an experiment to measure the sigma_ann of 100 MeV/c antiprotons on carbon target and the preliminary results are presented here.

The aim of the ASACUSA-CUSP experiment at CERN is to produce a cold, polarised antihydrogen beam and perform a high precision measurement of the ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the antihydrogen atom and compare it with that of the hydrogen atom using the same spectroscopic beam line. Towards this goal a significant step was successfully accomplished: synthesised antihydrogen atoms have been produced in a CUSP magnetic configuration and detected at the end of our spectrometer beam line in 2012 [1]. During a long shut down at CERN the ASACUSA-CUSP experiment had been renewed by introducing a new double-CUSP magnetic configuration and a new semi-cylindrical tracking detector (AMT) [2], and by improving the transport feature of low energy antiproton beams. The new tracking detector monitors the antihydrogen synthesis during the mixing cycle of antiprotons and positrons. In this work the latest results and improvements of the antihydrogen synthesis will be presented including highlights from the last beam time.

We describe the instrumentation for an experiment to measure the cross sections of antiprotons with kinetic energies of 130±10 keV annihilating on carbon, palladium, and platinum target foils of sub-100 nm thicknesses. A 120 ns long pulsed beam containing 10 5 – 10 6 antiprotons was allowed to traverse the foils, and the signal annihilations that resulted from this were isolated using a time-of-flight method. Backgrounds arose from Rutherford scattering of the antiprotons off the target foils, their annihilations in the target chamber walls, and π → μ → e decay of the charged pions that emerged from the annihilations. Some antiprotons slowed down and annihilated in the contamination on the target surfaces. This reduced the signal-to-background ratio of the measurement.

We report the successful commissioning and testing of a dedicated field-ioniser chamber for measuring principal quantum number distributions in antihydrogen as part of the ASACUSA hyperfine spectroscopy apparatus. The new chamber is combined with a beam normalisation detector that consists of plastic scintillators and a retractable passivated implanted planar silicon (PIPS) detector., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 6th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP2015)

The ASACUSA collaboration has developed a detector consisting of a large size BGO crystal to detect an atomic antihydrogen beam, and performed the direct detection of antihydrogen atoms. Energy spectra from antihydrogen annihilation on the BGO crystal are discussed in comparison to simulation results from the GEANT4 toolkit. Background mainly originating from cosmic rays were strongly suppressed by analyzing the energy deposited in the BGO and requiring a multiplicity of charged pions. Thus antihydrogen events were identified.

The results of the annihilation cross sections measurement of 5.3 MeV antiprotons on nickel, tin, platinum and Mylar targets performed by the ASACUSA Collaboration at CERN are presented and compared with the existing data and models. From the experimental point of view the presented data are the first measurement of antinucleon annihilation cross sections at low energies obtained with a pulsed beam. This results open the road for the next measurements at the very low energies of the order of 100 keV that are in progress by the ASACUSA Collaboration. The experimental method foreseen for the 100 keV measurement is illustrated.

Some years have passed since the report of the first production of cold antihydrogen by the Athena Collaboration and the Atrap Collaboration at CERN, but no clear answer has been given about the roles of the two mechanisms responsible for antihydrogen formation. A new preliminary analysis of the data acquired by the Athena Collaboration in different experimental conditions seems to suggest that three-body recombination mechanism is dominant in the first tens of seconds of the overlapping of the injected antiproton cloud with the positron plasma in the nested Penning trap, while radiative capture starts to become dominant afterwards.

π-4He interactions at 106MeV, with two secondary charged particles in the final state, have been studied using a self-shunted streamer chamber in a 0.65T magnetic field and equipped with two CCD videocameras for obtaining digitized stereo-images of nuclear events occurring within the fiducial volume of the streamer chamber. Branching ratios for the various interaction channels are deduced. Evidence is presented for a reaction channel involving a γ produced in the final state, as well as for the first observation of direct Δ- -resonance production. Cross-section distributions for the elastic and quasi-elastic interaction channels are also reported.

The FAST (Fiber Antiproton Scintillating Tracker) detector has been installed at the Antiproton Decelerator at the CERN PS. Its goal is the measurement of the annihilation cross section of slow antiprotons (around 5 MeV) in gaseous targets in the ASACUSA experiment. FAST has to reconstruct the charged pions tracks to identify the annihilation vertices. The detector consists of 2 axial and 4 stereo layers of scintillating fibers. Each layer is built with 1 mm 50 cm long BCF-10 fibers readout by 64 channel multianode PMTs for a total of 2688 readout channels. The anode outputs, amplified and discriminated, are sampled with a 320 MHz clock inside a Cyclone II FPGA by Altera, in order to retrieve the time information of each hit. The readout system is designed to cope with a spilled beam which lasts 250 ns every minute. The expected number of events per spill was around 10. This paper will describe the operation and the performance of the FAST detector during the tests with cosmic rays (August 2006) and during the data taking on the beam (September 2006).

Hossein Aghai-Khozani1,2, Daniel Barna3,4, Maurizio Corradini5,6, Ryugo Hayano4, Masaki Hori1,4, Takumi Kobayashi4, Marco Leali5,6, Evandro Lodi-Rizzini5,6, Valerio Mascagna5,6, Michela Prest7,8, Anna Soter1, Koichi Todoroki4, Erik Vallazza9, Luca Venturelli5,6, and Nicola Zurlo5,6 1Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, D-85748 Garching, Germany 2Physics Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland 3Wigner Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary 4Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Hongo7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 5Dipartimento di Collegato di Brescia, 25133 Brescia, Italy 6INFN, Gruppo Collegato di Brescia, 25133 Brescia, Italy 7Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche e Matematiche, Universita di Como, I-22100 Como, Italy 8INFN, Sezione di Milano Bicocca, I-20126 Milano, Italy 9INFN, Sezione di Trieste, I-34127 Trieste, Italy

The first observation of in-flight antiproton-nucleus annihilation at ∼130 keV obtained with the ASACUSA detector has demonstrated that the measurement of the cross section of the process is feasible at such extremely low energies Aghai-Khozani, H., et al., Eur. Phys. J. Plus 127, 55 (2012). Here we present the results of the data analysis with the evaluations of the antiproton annihilation cross sections on carbon, palladium and platinum targets at ∼125 keV.

A research has been made to look for a signature of the positive-strangeness baryon resonance Θ + ( 1530 ) , which is expected to decay into p K 0 . A peak is observed in the p π + π − invariant mass distribution in antiproton– 4 He annihilation reactions at rest with production of two π + π − pairs with invariant mass close to the K S 0 mass. The annihilation reactions on 4 He can involve two to four nucleons producing an energy blob characterized by high strangeness content. The peak is centred around 1560.0 ± 3.7 MeV and its width is very narrow. The statistical significance is 2.7; this value is considered of not sufficient significance to claim support of the Θ + . The data were collected with the Obelix spectrometer at the LEAR machine of CERN.

The φπ + /ωπ + ratio from n ¯ p annihilations on a liquid hydrogen target, for n ¯ momenta between 64 and 297 MeV/ c , was measured using the OBELIX spectrometer at LEAR. The ratio R ( ϕ π / ω π ) = σ ( n ¯ p → ϕ π + ) / σ ( n ¯ p → ω π + ) turned out 0.110±0.015 stat ±0.006 syst . Implications of this result on the OZI rule are discussed.

Antihydrogen, the atomic bound state of an antiproton and a positron, was produced at low energy for the first time by the ATHENA experiment, marking an important first step for precision studies of atomic antimatter. This paper describes the first production and some subsequent developments., Invitated Talk at COOL03, International Workshop on Beam Cooling and Related Topics, to be published in NIM A

The production and observation of cold antihydrogen atoms have been recently reported by the ATHENA experiment at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator. The antiatoms were produced by mixing low-energy antiprotons and positrons in an electromagnetic trap. The antihydrogen detection is based on the observation of a characteristic signature in the annihilation of the neutral antiatoms on the trap walls by means of an imaging particle detector. An overview of the apparatus is given and the results obtained are discussed.

The ATHENA experiment recently produced the first atoms of cold antihydrogen. This paper gives a brief review of how this was achieved., Invited talk at Int. Conf. on Low Energy Antiprotons 2003 (LEAP03), to be published in NIM B

First results on n annihilations on nucleons and nuclei measured by the OBELIX spectrometer are reported. Interesting new results on meson spectroscopy were obtained. Furthermore n-p and n - Nucleus (C, Al, Cu, Sn, Pb) annihilation cross sections between 100 and 300 MeV/c were measured.

In 2002, the ATHENA experiment was the first to produce large amounts of antihydrogen atoms at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD). In this review article, we collect and discuss all the relevant results of the experiment: antiproton and positron cooling and their recombination dynamics in the nested Penning trap, the methods used to unambiguously identify the antiatoms as well as the protonium background, the dependence of the antihydrogen formation on mixing time and temperature. An attempt to interpret the results in terms of the two-body and three-body formation reactions, taking into account the complicated nested-trap dynamics, is also made. The relevance of the ATHENA results on future experiments is discussed, together with a short overview of the current antimatter physics at the AD.

Data relative to antineutron and antiproton annihilation on large nuclei in the range 75-200 MeV/c present two unexpected features: (a) antineutron and antiproton cross sections have a similar size, (ii) the rise of the antineutron cross section at decreasing energy is much steeper than predictable for an inelastic process of purely strong nature at that energy. The observed behavior of antineutron-nucleus annihilations is similar to what would be expected for antiproton-nucleus annihilations, where Coulomb attraction focusses antiproton trajectories towards the nucleus, enhancing the inelastic cross section by a factor O(1/p) with respect to antineutrons on the same target. This results in a 1/p^2 behavior at small energies. The presence of a similar enhancement in the antineutron case may only be justified by an interaction with a longer range than strong interactions. Excluding a Coulomb force because of the antineutron neutrality, and taking into account that an intrinsic electric dipole is forbidden for the antineutron, the next choice is an electric dipole that is induced by the nuclear electric field. Recent theoretical works have shown that a non-negligible electric polarization may be induced in a neutron by QED vacuum polarization. Assuming this as a possibility, we have used a simple model to calculate the polarization strengths that are needed to fit the available data in terms of this effect. These are within the magnitude predicted by the vacuum polarization model. We have also discussed alternative scenarios that could induce an electric polarization of the antineutron as a consequence of the interplay between strong and e.m. interactions., Comment: 6 pages 2 figures

Antihydrogen, a positron bound to an antiproton, is the simplest antiatom. Its counterpart—hydrogen—is one of the most precisely investigated and best understood systems in physics research. High-resolution comparisons of both systems provide sensitive tests of CPT symmetry, which is the most fundamental symmetry in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. Any measured difference would point to CPT violation and thus to new physics. Here we report the development of an antihydrogen source using a cusp trap for in-flight spectroscopy. A total of 80 antihydrogen atoms are unambiguously detected 2.7 m downstream of the production region, where perturbing residual magnetic fields are small. This is a major step towards precision spectroscopy of the ground-state hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen using Rabi-like beam spectroscopy., Comparing hydrogen and antihydrogen—its antimatter counterpart—provides important tests of fundamental symmetries in the Standard Model. Kuroda et al. present a source of antihydrogen atoms that may provide high-precision in-flight measurements of their ground-state hyperfine splitting.

Up to now it has been observed that a fraction of about 3% of the p 's stopped in a dense He target survives for a surprisingly long time (tens of microseconds). As suggested by Condo in 1964 the long lifetime of p 's in He is explained by the existence of metastable states of the exotic atom p He + . An analysis of data from p 's stopped in He targets at 3 bar pressure by the Obelix apparatus at the LEAR decelerator at CERN is presented. We do not observe any significative amount of “prompt” annihilations (few nanoseconds) after the p 's capture.

The annihilation frequencies of 19 p p annihilation reactions at rest obtained in different target densities are analysed in order to determine the values of the P -wave annihilation percentage at each target density and the average hadronic branching ratios from P - and S -states. Both the assumptions of linear dependence of the annihilation frequencies on the P -wave annihilation percentage of the protonium state and the approach with the enhancement factors of Batty are considered. Furthermore the cases of incompatible measurements are discussed.

The ATHENA experiment at the Antiproton Decelerator facility at CERN aims at testing CPT symmetry with antihydrogen. An overview of the experiment, together with preliminary results of development towards the production of slow antihydrogen are reported.

We report here experimental evidence of the reflection of a large fraction of a beam of low energy antiprotons by an aluminum wall. This derives from the analysis of a set of annihilations of antiprotons that come to rest in rarefied helium gas after hitting the end wall of the apparatus. A Monte Carlo simulation of the antiproton path in aluminum indicates that the observed reflection occurs primarily via a multiple Rutherford-style scattering on Al nuclei, at least in the energy range 1-10 keV where the phenomenon is most visible in the analyzed data. These results contradict the common belief according to which the interactions between matter and antimatter are dominated by the reciprocally destructive phenomenon of annihilation., 5 pages with 5 figures

The p Ne annihilation cross section is measured for the first time in the momentum interval (53÷63) MeV/c. About 9000 pictures collected by the Streamer Chamber Collaboration (PS179) at LEAR-CERN have been scanned. Four events are found, corresponding to σ ann =2210±1105 mb. The result is compared to the set of measurements presently available in the region of low p momentum.

The p 3He annihilation cross section is measured for the first time in the momentum interval (50÷60) MeV/c. About 9000 pictures collected by the Streamer Chamber Collaboration (PS179) at LEAR–CERN have been scanned. Six events are found, corresponding to σann=1850±700 mb. The result is compared to the set of measurements presently available in the region of low p momentum.

The annihilation fractions and cross sections for the n p annihilation reaction in flight (∼50–400 MeV/c) into ηπ+ and η′π+ final states have been measured. The first ones follow the trend expected for P wave annihilations. From the ratios of the yields an evaluation of the pseudoscalar mixing angle in the standard form is possible. The value found shows that for pseudoscalar meson production from P wave the Quark Line Rule is not grossly violated.

The p D and p 4 He total annihilation cross sections have been measured with the Obelix apparatus at LEAR at, respectively, three and two values of the p incident momentum between 70 MeV/c and 36 MeV/c. The values of the p D annihilation cross section, at such low energies, are in agreement with a surprising result obtained in a recent low statistics measurement of the antiprotonic deuterium K α X-rays [M. Augsburger et al., Phys. Lett. B 461 (1999) 417] (see following article), concerning the unexpected narrow width of the antiprotonic deuterium 1s level.

A confirming evidence for two pseudoscalar states with masses M 1 =1405±5, Γ 1 =50±4 MeV/ c 2 and M 2 =1500±10, Γ 2 =100±20 MeV/ c 2 is reported. The second pseudoscalar fills the nonet and leaves the first as an outsider supporting the hypothesis for its exotic nature.