1. |
- Adrich, P., et al.
(author)
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Production of antihydrogen atoms by 6 keV antiprotons through a positronium cloud
- 2023
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In: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Nature. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 83:11
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We report on the first production of an antihydrogen beam by charge exchange of 6.1 keV antiprotons with a cloud of positronium in the GBAR experiment at CERN. The 100 keV antiproton beam delivered by the AD/ELENA facility was further decelerated with a pulsed drift tube. A 9 MeV electron beam from a linear accelerator produced a low energy positron beam. The positrons were accumulated in a set of two Penning-Malmberg traps. The positronium target cloud resulted from the conversion of the positrons extracted from the traps. The antiproton beam was steered onto this positronium cloud to produce the antiatoms. We observe an excess over background indicating antihydrogen production with a significance of 3-4 standard deviations.
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2. |
- Anderson, E. K., et al.
(author)
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Observation of the effect of gravity on the motion of antimatter
- 2023
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In: Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 621:7980, s. 716-722
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Einstein’s general theory of relativity from 1915 remains the most successful description of gravitation. From the 1919 solar eclipse to the observation of gravitational waves, the theory has passed many crucial experimental tests. However, the evolving concepts of dark matter and dark energy illustrate that there is much to be learned about the gravitating content of the universe. Singularities in the general theory of relativity and the lack of a quantum theory of gravity suggest that our picture is incomplete. It is thus prudent to explore gravity in exotic physical systems. Antimatter was unknown to Einstein in 1915. Dirac’s theory appeared in 1928; the positron was observed in 1932. There has since been much speculation about gravity and antimatter. The theoretical consensus is that any laboratory mass must be attracted by the Earth, although some authors have considered the cosmological consequences if antimatter should be repelled by matter. In the general theory of relativity, the weak equivalence principle (WEP) requires that all masses react identically to gravity, independent of their internal structure. Here we show that antihydrogen atoms, released from magnetic confinement in the ALPHA-g apparatus, behave in a way consistent with gravitational attraction to the Earth. Repulsive ‘antigravity’ is ruled out in this case. This experiment paves the way for precision studies of the magnitude of the gravitational acceleration between anti-atoms and the Earth to test the WEP.
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3. |
- Baker, C. J., et al.
(author)
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Measurements of Penning-Malmberg trap patch potentials and associated performance degradation
- 2024
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In: Physical Review Research. - 2643-1564. ; 6:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Antiprotons created by laser ionization of antihydrogen are observed to rapidly escape the ALPHA trap. Further, positron plasmas heat more quickly after the trap is illuminated by laser light for several hours. These phenomena can be caused by patch potentials-variations in the electrical potential along metal surfaces. A simple model of the effects of patch potentials explains the particle loss, and an experimental technique using trapped electrons is developed for measuring the electric field produced by the patch potentials. The model is validated by controlled experiments and simulations.
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4. |
- Sjölund, Peder, 1976-, et al.
(author)
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Characterisation of a three-dimensional Brownian motor in optical lattices
- 2007
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In: European Physical Journal D. - : Springer Verlag. - 1434-6060 .- 1434-6079. ; 44:2, s. 381-388
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present here a detailed study of the behaviour of a three dimensional Brownian motor based on cold atoms in a double optical lattice [P. Sjölund et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 190602 (2006)]. This includes both experiments and numerical simulations of a Brownian particle. The potentials used are spatially and temporally symmetric, but combined spatiotemporal symmetry is broken by phase shifts and asymmetric transfer rates between potentials. The diffusion of atoms in the optical lattices is rectified and controlled both in direction and speed along three dimensions. We explore a large range of experimental parameters, where irradiances and detunings of the optical lattice lights are varied within the dissipative regime. Induced drift velocities in the order of one atomic recoil velocity have been achieved.
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5. |
- Tempest, Kajsa-My, 1986-, et al.
(author)
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Multichannel hyperspherical model for Efimov physics with van der Waals interactions controlled by a Feshbach resonance
- 2023
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In: Physical Review A: covering atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information. - 2469-9926 .- 2469-9934. ; 107:5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Here we present a four-channel model that incorporates a magnetically tunable Feshbach resonance in a system of three atoms that interact via pairwise van der Waals interactions. Our method is designed to model recent experiments where the tunability of the scattering length has been used to study three-body Efimov states, which appear in the limit of a diverging two-body scattering length. Using this model, we calculate three-body adiabatic and effective potential curves and study how the strength (or width) of the Feshbach resonance affects the three-body effective hyperradial potential that is connected to the Efimov effect. We find that the position of the repulsive barrier, which has been used to explain the so-called van der Waals universality in broad resonances, is slightly shifted as the narrow-resonance limit is approached and that this shift is correlated to the appearance of two avoided crossings in the adiabatic energy landscape. More importantly, the attractive well is markedly shifted upward in energy and is extremely shallow for the narrowest resonance. We argue that this behavior is connected to the breakdown of van der Waals universality for weak (narrow) resonances.
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6. |
- Tempest, Kajsa-My, 1986-, et al.
(author)
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The Faddeev and Schrödinger approaches to Efimov states — a numerical comparison
- 2023
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In: Journal of Physics B. - 0953-4075 .- 1361-6455. ; 56:20
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We compare effective hyperspherical three-body potentials calculated using the S-wave part of the Faddeev equations to calculations using the full Schrödinger equation. As two-body model potential we test both a short-range potential and a Lennard-Jones potential with van der Waals tail. In the former case we find excellent agreement between the two methods for the lowest adiabatic state, indicating that the Faddeev method can be a useful tool also for numerical computations. For excited states the two methods show important differences, but agree for hyperradii larger than about five times the range of the potential (independent of the value of the scattering length and of the number of bound states). For the van der Waals potential, we focus on how well the Faddeev method reproduces the so-called van der Waals universality. We find that indeed the universality is manifest also using this method, but at a slightly different value of the universal parameter κ*. We further derive an efficient method to solve the integro-differential equation arising in the Faddeev method.
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