Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




ENERGY TECH
New antimatter method to provide 'a major experimental advantage'
by Staff Writers for IOP
London, UK (SPX) Jan 08, 2013


Illustration only.

Researchers have proposed a method for cooling trapped antihydrogen which they believe could provide 'a major experimental advantage' and help to map the mysterious properties of antimatter that have to date remained elusive.

The new method, developed by a group of researchers from the USA and Canada, could potentially cool trapped antihydrogen atoms to temperatures 25 times colder than already achieved, making them much more stable and a lot easier to experiment on.

The suggested method, which has been published in IOP Publishing's Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, involves a laser which is directed at antihydrogen atoms to give them a 'kick', causing them to lose energy and cool down.

Antihydrogen atoms are formed in an ultra-high vacuum trap by injecting antiprotons into positron plasma. An atomic process causes the antiproton to capture a positron which gives an electronically excited antihydrogen atom.

Typically, the antihydrogen atoms have a lot of energy compared to the trapping depth which can distort the measurements of their properties. As it is only possible to trap very few antihydrogen atoms, the main method for reducing the high energies is to laser cool the atoms to extremely low temperatures.

Co-author of the study, Professor Francis Robicheaux of Auburn University in the USA, said: "By reducing the antihydrogen energy, it should be possible to perform more precise measurements of all of its parameters. Our proposed method could reduce the average energy of trapped antihydrogen by a factor of more than 10.

The ultimate goal of antihydrogen experiments is to compare its properties to those of hydrogen. Colder antihydrogen will be an important step for achieving this."

This process, known as Doppler cooling, is an established method for cooling atoms; however, because of the restricted parameters that are needed to trap antimatter, the researchers need to be absolutely sure that it is possible.

"It is not trivial to make the necessary amount of laser light at a specific wavelength of 121 nm. Even after making the light, it will be difficult to mesh it with an antihydrogen trapping experiment. By doing the calculations, we've shown that this effort is worthwhile," continued Professor Robicheaux.

Through a series of computer simulations, they showed that antihydrogen atoms could be cooled to around 20 millikelvin; trapped antihydrogen atoms so far have energies up to 500 millikelvin.

In 2011, researchers from CERN reported that they had trapped antimatter for over 1000 seconds - a record. A year later, the first experiments were performed on antihydrogen whilst it was trapped between a series of magnets.

Even though the processes that control the trapping are largely unknown, the researchers believe that the laser cooling should increase the amount of time antihydrogen can be trapped for.

"Whatever the processes are, having slower moving, and more deeply trapped, antihydrogen should decrease the loss rate," said Professor Robicheaux.

Colder antihydrogen atoms could also be used to measure the gravitational property of antimatter. "No one has ever seen antimatter actually fall in the field of gravity," said co-author Dr Makoto Fujiwara of TRIUMF, Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. "Laser cooling would be a very significant step towards such an observation."

Antimatter fast facts:
+ Every particle has an antiparticle. For example, an electron's antiparticle is the positron and a proton's antiparticle is an antiproton.

+ An antiparticle is exactly the same as its corresponding particle but carries an opposite charge.

+ If a particle and its corresponding antiparticle meet, they destroy each other. This is known as annihilation.

+ The combination of one positron and one antiproton creates antihydrogen.

+ Theories suggest that after the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have formed. As the Universe today is composed almost entirely of matter, it remains a great mystery why we don't have this symmetry.

+ Scientists such as the ALPHA collaboration at CERN have been trying to measure the properties of antihydrogen to find clues as to why this asymmetry exists.

.


Related Links
Institute of Physics
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








ENERGY TECH
Research update: Jumping droplets help heat transfer
Boston MA (SPX) Jan 08, 2013
Many industrial plants depend on water vapor condensing on metal plates: In power plants, the resulting water is then returned to a boiler to be vaporized again; in desalination plants, it yields a supply of clean water. The efficiency of such plants depends crucially on how easily droplets of water can form on these metal plates, or condensers, and how easily they fall away, leaving room for mo ... read more


ENERGY TECH
Mission would drag asteroid to the moon

Russia designs manned lunar spacecraft

GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride

NASA probes crash into the moon

ENERGY TECH
'Black Beauty' could yield Martian secrets

India scales down experimental flying payloads for exploring Mars

Ancient Water-rich Meteorite Linked to Martian Crust

Stanford researchers develop acrobatic space rovers to explore moons and asteroids

ENERGY TECH
2012 in Polish space activities

Captain's log: real space chat for Star Trek crew

Congress Approves Bill Supporting Human Space Exploration

China's Chengdu aiming to be world's next Silicon Valley

ENERGY TECH
Mr Xi in Space

China plans manned space launch in 2013: state media

China to launch manned spacecraft

Tiangong 1 Parked And Waiting As Shenzhou 10 Mission Prep Continues

ENERGY TECH
Crew Wraps Up Robonaut Testing

Station Crew Ringing in New Year

Expedition 34 Ready to Ring in New Year

New ISS crew docked at Space Station

ENERGY TECH
Arianespace to launch VNREDSat-1A built by Astrium for Vietnam

Arianespace says 2012 sales leapt by 30%

CSF Applauds Passage Of Risk-Sharing Regime Extension For Launch Industry

Rokot Launch Set for January 15

ENERGY TECH
'17 billion' Earth-sized planets in Milky Way: study

Astrophysicists find wide binary stars wreak havoc in planetary systems

NASA Kepler hints at over 250 new potentially habitable worlds

Billions and Billions of Planets

ENERGY TECH
That's not what I meant: A new phase in reading photons

Space Trash May Make Radiation Shields

Reservoir Labs Selected For The DARPA Power Efficient Computing Research And Development Program

Liquid jets and bouncing balls combine for surprising results




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement