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Sympathetic cooling of positrons to cryogenic temperatures for antihydrogen production
Nature Communications, Volume: 12, Issue: 1
Swansea University Authors: Christopher Baker , Michael Charlton, April Cridland , Stefan Eriksson , Aled Isaac , Jack Jones, Niels Madsen , Daniel Maxwell , Patrick Mullan, Dirk van der Werf
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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/s41467-021-26086-1
Abstract
The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, predicted by Dirac in 1931 and discovered by Anderson in 1933, plays a key role in many scientific and everyday endeavours. Notably, the positron is a constituent of antihydrogen, the only long-lived neutral antimatter bound state that can currently be...
Published in: | Nature Communications |
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ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2021
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URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa58657 |
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Abstract: |
The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, predicted by Dirac in 1931 and discovered by Anderson in 1933, plays a key role in many scientific and everyday endeavours. Notably, the positron is a constituent of antihydrogen, the only long-lived neutral antimatter bound state that can currently be synthesized at low energy, presenting a prominent system for testing fundamental symmetries with high precision. Here, we report on the use of laser cooled Be+ ions to sympathetically cool a large and dense plasma of positrons to directly measured temperatures below 7 K in a Penning trap for antihydrogen synthesis. This will likely herald a significant increase in the amount of antihydrogen available for experimentation, thus facilitating further improvements in studies of fundamental symmetries. |
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Faculty of Science and Engineering |
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This work was supported by: CNPq, FAPERJ, RENAFAE (Brazil); NSERC, NRC/TRIUMF, EHPDS/EHDRS, FQRNT (Canada); FNU (NICE Centre), Carlsberg Foundation (Denmark); ISF (Israel); STFC, EPSRC (UK); DOE, NSF (USA); and VR (Sweden). |
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1 |