Antimatter matters: Progress in cold antihydrogen research

Abstract

The purpose of cold antihydrogen research is briefly reviewed together with the latest developments of manipulating antihydrogen atoms. Two major progresses last year were the trapping of antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic bottle and synthesis of antihydrogen atoms in a cusp trap, where a spin-polarized antihydrogen beam can be extracted as an intensified beam. The magnetic bottle consists of an octupole coil and a pair of mirror coils, which improved the magnetic field uniformity near the axis, and so the stability of trapping antiprotons and positrons. Eventually, antihydrogen atoms were trapped for more than 1000s, which is ready to be testified with high precision laser spectroscopy. The cusp trap consists of a superconducting anti-Helmholtz coil and a stack of multiple ring electrodes. This success opens a new path to make a stringent test of the CPT symmetry via high precision microwave spectroscopy of ground-state hyperfine transitions of antihydrogen atoms.