Experimental and theoretical study of the plasma physics of antihydrogen generation and trapping. Final Scientific Report
The main goal of the project was to determine if matter and antimatter are exact conjugates. According to the current best understanding of the universe, this property should hold. The ALPHA collaboration performed a series of high precision measurements on trapped antihydrogen and compared the results to those that would be expected for hydrogen. Any difference would have enormous implications for our understanding of basic physics because a difference would mean the CPT theorem is violated. In pursuit of this goal, we needed to understand plasma and atomic processes for a novel set of plasma parameters: extremely low temperature (a few 10's of K) and high magnetic field (a couple T). Our attempts to control/manipulate these plasmas led to important goals related directly to plasma physics. For example, the radiative coupling of the cyclotron motion to a microwave cavity can display collective effects as the number of positrons increases. This DOE award mainly provided support for theoretical studies of the atomic and plasma processes that determine the outcome of the experiments.