Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 32: Kernphysik/Spektroskopie

HK 32.1: Group Report

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 16:30–17:00, TU MA005

ATRAP - on the way to trapped Antihydrogen — •Dieter Grzonka — Institut für Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425Jülich, Germany

The ATRAP experiment at the CERN antiproton decelerator AD aims for a test of the CPT invariance by a comparison of the hydrogen to antihydrogen atom spectroscopy. The antihydrogen production is routinely operated at ATRAP [1] in a nested Penning trap configuration, a stack of ring electrodes capturing the charged particles in axial direction within a uniform magnetic solenoid field for the radial confinement. Detailed studies have been performed in order to improve the production efficiency of useful antihydrogen. High precision measurements of atomic transitions requires trapped cold antihydrogen in the ground state. The trapping of neutral antihydrogen atoms should work via the force on the magnetic moment in a magnetic field gradient. To ensure a high antihydrogen trapping efficiency a magnetic trap has to be superimposed on the nested Penning trap. A basic question in such a configuration is the possibility to keep the antiproton and positron clouds in the stabilizing solenoid field which is strongly distorted by the field of the magnetic trap.

Studies on the antihydrogen production and first trapping tests of charged particles within a combined magnetic/Penning trap will be presented.

^* Supported by FZ-Jülich and BMBF.

[1] G. Gabrielse et al., PRL 89, 213401 (2002), PRL 89, 233401 (2002), PRL 93, 073401 (2004), P. Oxley et al., Phys. Lett. B595, 60 (2004).