Speaker
Daniel Krasnicky
(GE)
Description
The AE$\bar\textrm{g}$IS experiment plans to perform a direct
measurement of the gravitational acceleration $\bar g$ of antihydrogen in the gravitational field of the Earth and thus test the validity of the weak equivalence principle on antimatter.
The production of antihydrogen will be performed by combining the
advantages of pulsed charge-exchange reaction between highly excited
positronium metastable atoms and cold antiprotons that are trapped in a cryogenic Penning trap. Once created, the excited antihydrogen atom will be formed into an anti-atom beam via the use of inhomogeneous electric fields. The deflection of this anti-atom beam due to gravity will be measured by using the moiré deflectometer gratings and a position sensitive detector at micrometer precision.
While still in construction and development phase, AE$\bar{\text{g}}$IS started taking preliminary data since 2012. We present an overview of the experiment, describe its current status and show some of the recent results with antiprotons including the studies of direct low energy antiproton annihilation in silicon and nuclear emulsion detectors. We also show the results of a successful extension of an atom optics tool (the moiré deflectometer) for the measurement of small electromagnetic forces acting on slow antiprotons. This proof-of-principle measurement shows the feasibility and strength of such detection technique for the foreseen gravity measurement in AE$\bar{\text{g}}$IS.
Collaboration
AEgIS collaboration
Primary author
Daniel Krasnicky
(GE)
