Published 2012 | Version v1
Publication

The AEGIS experiment at CERN: Measuring the free fall of antihydrogen

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Description

After the first production of cold antihydrogen by the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments ten years ago, new second-generation experiments are aimed at measuring the fundamental properties of this anti-atom. The goal of AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) is to test the weak equivalence principle by studying the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter with a pulsed, cold antihydrogen beam. The experiment is currently being assembled at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator. In AEGIS, antihydrogen will be produced by charge exchange of cold antiprotons with positronium excited to a high Rydberg state (n > 20). An antihydrogen beam will be produced by controlled acceleration in an electric-field gradient (Stark acceleration). The deflection of the horizontal beam due to its free fall in the gravitational field of the earth will be measured with a moiré deflectometer. Initially, the gravitational acceleration will be determined to a precision of 1%, requiring the detection of about 10 5 antihydrogen atoms. In this paper, after a general description, the present status of the experiment will be reviewed. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Created:
April 14, 2023
Modified:
November 29, 2023