Key Points
- Physicists at CERN have developed a new technique that is ten times more efficient at trapping antihydrogen.
- The breakthrough will help scientists study why there is an imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe.
- The new method uses laser-cooled ions to produce ultra-cold positrons, thereby boosting the trapping rate.
- The team trapped a record 15,000 antihydrogen atoms in less than 7 hours.
Physicists from Swansea University have led a major scientific breakthrough at CERN, developing a new technique that allows them to trap antihydrogen ten times more efficiently than before.
This breakthrough, part of the international ALPHA collaboration and published in Nature Communications, could help scientists answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. The Big Bang theory says equal amounts of both should have been created, so where did all the antimatter go?
Antihydrogen is the “mirror image” of hydrogen. By trapping it and studying it, scientists can see if antimatter behaves according to the same rules as regular matter.
However, producing and trapping antihydrogen is an incredibly difficult process. Previous methods could trap only about 2,000 atoms over a full 24 hours. The Swansea-led team has now changed that.
Using laser-cooled beryllium ions, the team figured out how to cool positrons (a key ingredient of antihydrogen) to less than 10 Kelvin (below –263°C), which is significantly colder than ever before. These ultra-cold positrons make the process of creating and trapping antihydrogen much more efficient. The team trapped a record 15,000 atoms in less than 7 hours.
This breakthrough opens up a new era for the ALPHA experiment. It will enable a wider range of experiments and more precise tests of fundamental physics, including how antimatter interacts with gravity.
“It’s more than a decade since I first realized that this was the way forward, so it’s incredibly gratifying to see the spectacular outcome,” said Professor Niels Madsen, the study’s lead author.
“This fantastic achievement… represents a major paradigm shift in the capabilities of antihydrogen research,” added Dr. Kurt Thompson, a leading researcher on the project. “Experiments that used to take months can now be performed in a single day.”
