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The AEGIS experiment at CERN: Measuring the free fall of antihydrogen
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- After the first production of cold antihydrogen by the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments ten years ago, new second-generation experiments are aimed at measuring the fundamental properties of this anti-atom. The goal of AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) is to test the weak equivalence principle by studying the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter with a pulsed, cold antihydrogen beam. The experiment is currently being assembled at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator. In AEGIS, antihydrogen will be produced by charge exchange of cold antiprotons with positronium excited to a high Rydberg state (n > 20). An antihydrogen beam will be produced by controlled acceleration in an electric-field gradient (Stark acceleration). The deflection of the horizontal beam due to its free fall in the gravitational field of the earth will be measured with a moiré deflectometer. Initially, the gravitational acceleration will be determined to a precision of 1%, requiring the detection of about 10^5 antihydrogen atoms. In this paper, after a general description, the present status of the experiment will be reviewed.
- Subjects :
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Physics::General Physics
Antimatter
Deflectometry
Gravity
Gravitational acceleration
Nuclear physics
Gravitational field
Physics::Atomic and Molecular Clusters
Physics::Atomic Physics
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
Antihydrogen
Matter interferometry
Weak equivalence principle
Physics
Large Hadron Collider
ELEMENTARY PARTICLE PHYSICS
GRAVITATION
Condensed Matter Physics
Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Antiproton Decelerator
Antiproton
Physics::Accelerator Physics
Rydberg state
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....55cee8f848667d49e4e5fb378df8f187