Optimizing Antihydrogen Production via Slow Plasma Merging
Atomic Physics
2025-11-11 v1 High Energy Physics - Experiment
Plasma Physics
Abstract
We measure the time-dependent temperature and density distribution of antiprotons and positrons while slowly combining them to make antihydrogen atoms in a nested Penning-Malmberg trap. The total antihydrogen yield and the number of atoms escaping the trap as a beam are greatest when the positron temperature is lowest and when antiprotons enter the positron plasma at the smallest radius. We control these parameters by changing the rate at which we lower the electrostatic barrier between the antiproton and positron plasmas and by heating the positrons. With the optimal settings, we produce antihydrogen atoms per -minute run, surpassing the previous state of the art -- atoms in minutes -- by a factor of .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.06883,
title = {Optimizing Antihydrogen Production via Slow Plasma Merging},
author = {E D Hunter and M Bumbar and C Amsler and M Bayo and H Breuker and M Cerwenka and G Costantini and R Ferragut and M Giammarchi and A Gligorova and G Gosta and M Hori and C Killian and V Kraxberger and N Kuroda and A Lanz and M Leali and G Maero and C Malbrunot and V Mascagna and Y Matsuda and S Migliorati and D J Murtagh and M Romé and R E Sheldon and M C Simon and M Tajima and V Toso and S Ulmer and L Venturelli and A Weiser and E Widmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.06883},
year = {2025}
}