학술논문
Sympathetic cooling of positrons to cryogenic temperatures for antihydrogen production
Document Type
article
Author
Baker, CJ; Bertsche, W; Capra, A; Cesar, CL; Charlton, M; Mathad, A Cridland; Eriksson, S; Evans, A; Evetts, N; Fabbri, S; Fajans, J; Friesen, T; Fujiwara, MC; Grandemange, P; Granum, P; Hangst, JS; Hayden, ME; Hodgkinson, D; Isaac, CA; Johnson, MA; Jones, JM; Jones, SA; Jonsell, S; Kurchaninov, L; Madsen, N; Maxwell, D; McKenna, JTK; Menary, S; Momose, T; Mullan, P; Olchanski, K; Olin, A; Peszka, J; Powell, A; Pusa, P; Rasmussen, CØ; Robicheaux, F; Sacramento, RL; Sameed, M; Sarid, E; Silveira, DM; Stutter, G; So, C; Tharp, TD; Thompson, RI; van der Werf, DP; Wurtele, JS
Source
Nature Communications. 12(1)
Subject
Language
Abstract
The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, predicted by Dirac in 1931 and discovered by Anderson in 1933, plays a key role in many scientific and everyday endeavours. Notably, the positron is a constituent of antihydrogen, the only long-lived neutral antimatter bound state that can currently be synthesized at low energy, presenting a prominent system for testing fundamental symmetries with high precision. Here, we report on the use of laser cooled Be+ ions to sympathetically cool a large and dense plasma of positrons to directly measured temperatures below 7 K in a Penning trap for antihydrogen synthesis. This will likely herald a significant increase in the amount of antihydrogen available for experimentation, thus facilitating further improvements in studies of fundamental symmetries.