CAP Lecture Casting Light on Antimatter: Fundamental Physics with Bottled Antihydrogen Atoms

CAP Lecture
Casting Light on Antimatter: Fundamental Physics with Bottled Antihydrogen Atoms

Antimatter was predicted 80 years ago by Paul Dirac. While work with anti-particles is now commonplace, antimatter atoms have only been produced at low energies in the last decade. In fall 2010, the ALPHA experiment, an international project based at CERN with significant Canadian involvement, demonstrated trapping of antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic âEURoebottleâEUR for 0.2 second. In June 2011, the group showed that they can confine antihydrogen for as long as 1000 seconds. These achievements are opening up new opportunities to address some of the most fundamental questions in physics: does antimatter shine in the same colour as matter? Does antimatter fall to the ground in the same way as the matter does? This lecture will describe how we make, trap, and study antihydrogen atoms with the ALPHA experiment at CERN, with some emphasis on important roles Canadian students are playing in this exciting project.