Results on the strong equivalence principle, dark matter, and new forces

Heckel, B. R.; Adelberger, E. G.; Baeßler, S.; Gundlach, J. H.; Harris, Michael G.; Hoyle, C. D.; Merkowitz, Stephen M.; Schmidt, Ulrich; Sharp, Andrew J.; Smith, G.; Swanson, Erik

doi:10.1016/s0273-1177(99)00995-3

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…16 All of these arguments, however, do not apply to more elaborate models involving scalar and vector gravitons. While the behavior of ordinary matter under the influence of gravity has been thoroughly tested over a large range of distance scales, 17 the same is not true for antimatter. In fact, no experimental study on the behavior of antimatter particles in a gravitational field has ever been successfully carried out.…”

Section: Antimatter Gravitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The ATHENA experiment for the study of antihydrogen

Amsler

Bonomi

Fontana

et al. 2014

Int. J. Mod. Phys. A

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In 2002, the ATHENA experiment was the first to produce large amounts of antihydrogen atoms at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD). In this review article, we collect and discuss all the relevant results of the experiment: antiproton and positron cooling and their recombination dynamics in the nested Penning trap, the methods used to unambiguously identify the antiatoms as well as the protonium background, the dependence of the antihydrogen formation on mixing time and temperature. An attempt to interpret the results in terms of the two-body and three-body formation reactions, taking into account the complicated nested-trap dynamics, is also made. The relevance of the ATHENA results on future experiments is discussed, together with a short overview of the current antimatter physics at the AD.

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Section: Antimatter Gravitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The ATHENA experiment for the study of antihydrogen

Amsler

Bonomi

Fontana

et al. 2014

Int. J. Mod. Phys. A

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“…The principal of equivalence between gravitational mass and inertial mass is a cornerstone of general relativity. The universality of free-fall (UFF), the experimental evidence on which the weak equivalence principle is based, has been tested to be valid to a very high precision (1 part in 10 trillion) by many experiments using a variety of techniques [1]. However, the UFF has never been tested directly with antimatter.…”

Section: The Aegis Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the gravitational free-fall of antihydrogen

et al. 2014

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Antihydrogen holds the promise to test, for the first time, the universality of free-fall with a system composed entirely of antiparticles. The AEgIS experiment at CERN’s antiproton decelerator aims to measure the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter by measuring the deflection of a beam of antihydrogen in the Earths gravitational field (g¯). The principle of the experiment is as follows: cold antihydrogen atoms are synthesized in a Penning-Malberg trap and are Stark accelerated towards a moiré deflectometer, the classical counterpart of an atom interferometer, and annihilate on a position sensitive detector. Crucial to the success of the experiment is the spatial precision of the position sensitive detector. We propose a novel free-fall detector based on a hybrid of two technologies: emulsion detectors, which have an intrinsic spatial resolution of 50 nm but no temporal information, and a silicon strip / scintillating fiber tracker to provide timing and positional information. In 2012 we tested emulsion films in vacuum with antiprotons from CERN’s antiproton decelerator. The annihilation vertices could be observed directly on the emulsion surface using the microscope facility available at the University of Bern. The annihilation vertices were successfully reconstructed with a resolution of 1–2 μmon the impact parameter. If such a precision can be realized in the final detector, Monte Carlo simulations suggest of order 500 antihydrogen annihilations will be sufficient to determine g¯with a 1 % accuracy. This paper presents current research towards the development of this technology for use in the AEgIS apparatus and prospects for the realization of the final detector

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“…This postulate is called the weak equivalence principle (WEP) of general relativity. It has been extremely well tested with ordinary matter, at a wide range of length scales from microscopic to astronomical distances [1].…”

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confidence: 99%