Related papers: Cold-Antimatter Physics
The cold emission of particles from surfaces under intense electric fields is a process which underpins a variety of applications including atom probe tomography (APT), an analytical microscopy technique with near-atomic spatial resolution.…
A number of experiments are currently underway on antimatter, particularly anti-hydrogen, to test whether the fundamental interactions behave the same way as for matter. Here we present a simple argument showing that a bound on a difference…
Discrete symmetry violation in the weak interaction is central to the Standard Model of particle physics, however the origin of these violations is not well understood. Nor are we able to provide a satisfactory explanation of the Universal…
ALPHA is an experiment at CERN, whose ultimate goal is to perform a precise test of CPT symmetry with trapped antihydrogen atoms. After reviewing the motivations, we discuss our recent progress toward the initial goal of stable trapping of…
The Weak Equivalence Principle is the founding pillar of General Relativity and as such it should be verified as precisely as possible. The Microscope experiment tested it in low Earth orbit, finding that Pt and Ti test masses fall toward…
ATHENA's first detection of cold antihydrogen atoms relied on their annihilation signatures in a sophisticated particle detector. We will review the features of the ATHENA detector and its applications in trap physics. The detector for a…
Various approaches to physics beyond the Standard Model can lead to small violations of CPT invariance. Since CPT symmetry can be measured with ultrahigh precision, CPT tests offer an interesting phenomenological avenue to search for…
The AEgIS collaboration is underway to directly measure the gravitational free-fall of neutral antimatter atoms. The experiment recently succeded in producing a pulsed cold antihydrogen source for the first time, and has now entered into…
We present the results of an experiment to search for trapped antihydrogen atoms with the ALPHA antihydrogen trap at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator. Sensitive diagnostics of the temperatures, sizes, and densities of the trapped antiproton…
In light of recent experimental proposals to measure the free fall acceleration of antihydrogen in the earth's gravitational field, we investigate the bounds that existing experiments place on any asymmetry between the free fall of matter…
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, being a local, unitary and Lorentz-invariant quantum field theory, remains symmetric under the combined action of Charge, Parity, and Time Reversal (CPT) symmetry. This automatically implies that…
We consider an extension of the recent experiment with ultracold neutrons and the quantization of its vertical motion in order to test the Weak Equivalence Principle. We show that an improvement on the energy resolution of the experiment…
Valuable information on interactions violating $P$- and $T$-invariance can be extracted from atomic experiments. The hypothesis of a large weak matrix element between single-particle states in heavy nuclei, $\sim 100$ eV, is ruled out by…
In a paper by Villata (2011), the possibility of a repulsive gravitational interaction between antimatter and ordinary matter was discussed. The author argued that this anti-gravity can be regarded as a prediction of general relativity,…
Atomic experiments bring meaningful and valuable information on fundamental symmetries. The hypothesis of a large ($\sim 100$ eV) P-odd weak matrix element between single-particle states in heavy nuclei is inconsistent with the results of…
This article reviews recent developments in tests of fundamental physics using atoms and molecules, including the subjects of parity violation, searches for permanent electric dipole moments, tests of the CPT theorem and Lorentz symmetry,…
We present a systematic phenomenological analysis of the tests of CPT symmetry that are possible within an {\em open} quantum-mechanical description of the neutral kaon system that is motivated by arguments based on quantum gravity and…
There has been renewed interest in the idea of antigravity -- that matter and antimatter repel gravitationally - in lieu of the recent beautiful ALPHA-g result for the free-fall acceleration of antihydrogen of $a_{\bar{H}}=(0.75\pm…
A primary goal of the ALPHA experiment at CERN is to perform precise tests of CPT symmetry. Here, we report on the significant progress made in recent years on antihydrogen spectroscopy and the outlook for the future.
The strong equivalence principle, local Lorentz invariance and CPT symmetry are fundamental ingredients of the quantum field theories used to describe elementary particle physics. Nevertheless, each may be violated by simple modifications…