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24 Aug 2017
Image above: Audric Husson working on GBAR’s antiproton decelerator, which his team developed and installed and is now commissioning. (Image: Max Brice/CERN).
If matter falls down, does antimatter do the same? GBAR (Gravitational Behaviour of Antihydrogen at Rest), the experiment that will give us the answer, has just had a brand new part installed – an antiproton decelerator.
Located in the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) hall, GBAR will measure the freefall acceleration of antihydrogen atoms within Earth’s gravitational field. To do that, something special has to be created first – antihydrogen ions, each consisting of one antiproton surrounded by two positrons. While these particles are very hard to produce, they are significantly easier to manipulate than antihydrogen atoms thanks to their positive charge.
The first ingredient of the antihydrogen ions – the antiprotons – will be supplied by the new ELENA (Extra Low Energy Antiproton) deceleration ring. The lower their energy, the bigger the probability that antihydrogen ions will form, so the beam coming from ELENA at 100 KeV will be further slowed down to just 1 KeV by the newly installed GBAR antiproton decelerator.
The second ingredient – the positrons – will be created with the help of the GBAR linear accelerator installed earlier in 2017.
A week after the first antiprotons circulated in ELENA, an antiproton extraction line was installed between that deceleration ring and the GBAR decelerator.
Image above: The extraction line connecting ELENA to GBAR’s newly installed decelerator. (Image: Julien Ordan/CERN).
In the coming months, the first antiprotons will fly out of ELENA into GBAR, which will be the first of five experiments in the AD hall to receive a beam from ELENA.
In the meantime, both the decelerator and the linac will be carefully prepared for the first phase of the experiment, which is dedicated to the creation of the first antihydrogen ions. “Beam path, energy and the efficiency of the system are the three things we will measure to make sure that the antiproton beam behaves the way we expect. We need to know the exact number of antiprotons in the bunch and how their energy diminishes while passing through the decelerator’s chambers,” explains Audric Husson, a member of the team that developed and installed the new part, and currently in charge of its commissioning.
The rest of the equipment needed to measure the freefall of the antihydrogen atoms will be installed by the end of 2018. The first data might even be taken before Long Shutdown 2, due to start in January 2019, during which the accelerator complex will be closed for upgrades.
Note:
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.
Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.
Related articles & links:
Antiproton Decelerator (AD): https://home.cern/about/accelerators/antiproton-decelerator
ELENA (Extra Low Energy Antiproton): http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/11/cern-new-ring-to-slow-down-antimatter.html
First antiprotons in ELENA:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2017/08/first-antiprotons-in-elena.html
GBAR linear accelerator: https://home.cern/cern-people/updates/2017/03/paving-way-new-antimatter-experiment
For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: http://home.cern/
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Iva Raynova.
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