English

Efficient positronium laser excitation for antihydrogen production in a magnetic field

Quantum Physics 2009-11-13 v3

Abstract

Antihydrogen production by charge exchange reaction between Positronium (Ps) atoms and antiprotons requires an efficient excitation of Ps atoms up to high-n levels (Rydberg levels). In this study it is assumed that a Ps cloud is produced within a relatively strong uniform magnetic field (1 Tesla) and with a relatively high temperature (100 K). Consequently, the structure of energy levels are deeply modified by Zeeman and motional Stark effects. A two-step laser light excitation, the first one from ground to n=3 and the second from this level to a Rydberg level, is proposed and the physics of the problem is discussed. We derive a simple formula giving the absorption probability with substantially incoherent laser pulses. A 30% population deposition in high-nn states can be reached with feasible lasers suitably tailored in power and spectral bandwidth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0804.0371,
  title  = {Efficient positronium laser excitation for antihydrogen production in a magnetic field},
  author = {F. Castelli and I. Boscolo and S. Cialdi and M. G. Giammarchi and D. Comparat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.0371},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

18 pages, 4 figures; changed content (with erasing of section 2), adding a new figure and new references