SABANCI UNIVERSITY - PHYSICS SEMINAR

Title: Antihydrogen research: tests of fundamental physics

Speaker: Cláudio Lenz Cesar ( Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, ALPHA Collaboration - CERN)

Date/Time: 16 Jun 2014, Monday, 13:40

Place: Sabanci University, SUNUM seminar room

We describe an ongoing research program with antimatter atoms at the ALPHA Collaboration at CERN. A comparison of the spectra of antihydrogen with hydrogen should provide one of the most stringent test of the CPT-symmetry, probing into possible asymmetries between matter and antimatter, one of Physics' big mysteries. In possession of neutral antimatter we are also planning tests of the Equivalence Principle, checking whether antimatter is gravitationally affected the same way as matter in our matter-dominated Universe. We describe the developments that enabled us to produce and trap[1] cold antihydrogen atoms for minutes[2], to perform an initial microwave spin-flip experiment[3] and start to probe gravitational effects[4] and other fundamental quantities. High-resolution laser spectroscopy in the 1s-2s transition of hydrogen and antihydrogen is the main goal and next step in the experiment and we describe the limits and the techniques we have been developing for this in Rio towards a new trap for hydrogen.

[1] G. Andresen et al.(ALPHA), “Trapped Antihydrogen”, Nature 468, 673(2010);

[2] G. Andresen et al.(ALPHA), “Confinement of antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds”, Nature Physics 7, 578(2011);

[3] C. Amole et al.(ALPHA), “Resonant quantum transitions in trapped antihydrogen atoms”, Nature doi:10.1038/nature10942 (2012);

[4] ALPHA Collaboration and Charman, A.E., “Description and first application of a new technique to measure the gravitational mass of antihydrogen”, Nature Communications 4, 1785 (2012)

Information about the speaker: //www.if.ufrj.br/~lenz/laser/Home.html

Contact: İsmet İnönü Kaya, iikaya@sabanciuniv.edu