Journal article 214 views 2 downloads
Be+ assisted, simultaneous confinement of more than 15000 antihydrogen atoms
Nature Communications, Volume: 16, Issue: 1
Swansea University Authors:
Christopher Baker , April Cridland
, Niels Madsen
, Nishant Bhatt, Michael Charlton, Stefan Eriksson
, LUKAS GOLINO, Maria Gomes Goncalves, Aled Isaac
, Janko Nauta, JOANNA PESZKA, Tom Robertson-Brown, Joos Schoonwater, Kurt Thompson, EDWARD THORPE-WOODS, Dirk van der Werf
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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/s41467-025-65085-4
Abstract
Antihydrogen, the bound state of a positron and an antiproton, is the only pure anti-atomic system ever studied. It is produced exclusively in the laboratory, as it has never been observed in nature. This unique system is of great interest for searching for tentative differences between matter and a...
| Published in: | Nature Communications |
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| ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
| Published: |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2025
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa70963 |
| Abstract: |
Antihydrogen, the bound state of a positron and an antiproton, is the only pure anti-atomic system ever studied. It is produced exclusively in the laboratory, as it has never been observed in nature. This unique system is of great interest for searching for tentative differences between matter and antimatter. Antihydrogen has been routinely trapped since 2010 and accumulated since 2017, enabling, for example, the first precision spectroscopic study of the anti-atom in 2018 and the first observation of the influence of gravity in 2023. Here we report an eight-fold increase in the trapping rate of antihydrogen, enabled by sympathetic cooling of positrons with laser-cooled beryllium ions. With beryllium sympathetic cooling, we now accumulate over 15000 antihydrogen atoms in under seven hours. This technique transforms our ability to study systematic and sidereal effects in existing experiments while paving the way for studies that would otherwise remain out of reach. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |
| Funders: |
This work was supported by: CNPq, FAPERJ, RENAFAE (Brazil); NSERC, NRC/TRIUMF, EHPDS/EHDRS, CFI, DRAC (Canada); FNU (Nice Centre), Carlsberg Foundation (Denmark); STFC, EPSRC, the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust (UK); DOE, NSF (USA); ISF (Israel); and VR (Sweden). |
| Issue: |
1 |

