Prospects for Studies of the Free Fall and Gravitational Quantum States of Antimatter
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Different experiments are ongoing to measure the effect of gravity on cold neutral antimatter atoms such as positronium, muonium, and antihydrogen. Among those, the project GBAR at CERN aims to measure precisely the gravitational fall of ultracold antihydrogen atoms. In the ultracold regime, the interaction of antihydrogen atoms with a surface is governed by the phenomenon of quantum reflection which results in bouncing of antihydrogen atoms on matter surfaces. This allows the application of a filtering scheme to increase the precision of the free fall measurement. In the ultimate limit of smallest vertical velocities, antihydrogen atoms are settled in gravitational quantum states in close analogy to ultracold neutrons (UCNs). Positronium is another neutral system involving antimatter for which free fall under gravity is currently being investigated at UCL. Building on the experimental techniques under development for the free fall measurement, gravitational quantum states could also be observed in positronium. In this contribution, we report on the status of the ongoing experiments and discuss the prospects of observing gravitational quantum states of antimatter and their implications.
Date Issued
2015-12-01
Date Acceptance
2014-10-01
Citation
Advances in High Energy Physics, 2015, 2015
ISSN
1687-7357
Publisher
Hindawi
Journal / Book Title
Advances in High Energy Physics
Volume
2015
Copyright Statement
© 2015 G. Dufour et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The publication of this article was funded by SCOAP3.
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Subjects
01 Mathematical Sciences
02 Physical Sciences
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
379642