Coherent spectroscopy with a single antiproton spin
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Coherent quantum transition spectroscopy is a powerful tool in metrology¹, quantum information processing², magnetometry³, and precision tests of the Standard Model⁴. It was applied with great success in proton and deuteron magnetic moment measurements⁵, which culminated in MASER spectroscopy with sub-parts per trillion resolution⁶ and many other experiments at the forefront of physics⁷. All these experiments were performed on macroscopic ensembles of particles, while the coherent spectroscopy of a “free” single nuclear spin has never been reported before. Here, we demonstrate coherent quantum transition spectroscopy of the spin of a single antiproton stored in a cryogenic Penning-trap system. We apply a multi-trap technique⁸, detect the antiproton spin-state using the continuous Stern-Gerlach-effect⁹, and transport the particle to the homogeneous magnetic field of a precision trap (PT). Here, we induce the coherent dynamics and analyze the result by quantum-projection measurements in the analysis trap¹⁰ . We observe for the first time Rabi-oscillations of an antiproton spin and achieve in time-series measurements spin inversion probabilities above 80% at spin coherence times of ≈ 50s. Scans of single-particle spin resonances show inversions >70%, at transition line-widths 16 times narrower than in previous measurements⁸, limited by cyclotron frequency measurement decoherence. This achievement marks a major step towards at least 10-fold improved tests of matter/antimatter symmetry using proton and antiproton magnetic moments.
Date Issued
2025-08-07
Date Acceptance
2025-06-23
Citation
Nature, 2025, 644, pp.64-68
ISSN
0028-0836
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
64
End Page
68
Journal / Book Title
Nature
Volume
644
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Identifier
10.1038/s41586-025-09323-1
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-07-23