Table of contents

Research on the production of cold antihydrogen atoms, aimed at directly testing the CPT invariance and the equivalence principle for antimatter, is reviewed. The properties of cold positron and electron plasmas, in particular the processes accompanying antiproton stopping, are discussed. Mechanisms for the formation of antihydrogen atoms are analyzed. The most favorable conditions for the production and confinement of cold antihydrogen atoms are appraised.

The effect of weak magnetic fields on biosystems is the subject matter of the science of magnetobiology. There are objective factors, due to theory lagging far behind experiment, that are hindering the development of this science. Academic interest in the subject is restrained by the fact that experimental data lack a clear physical explanation. Besides, there is a strong imbalance in how physics and biology are involved in magnetobiology, the former being still in infancy in this respect. It is this imbalance which is currently the driving force for the development of the theory of magnetobiology. This brief analytical review focuses on the physical aspects of magnetobiological research. The task of magnetobiology is to explore the biological effects of weak magnetic fields and to understand mechanisms behind these effects. Magnetobiology is part of a more general issue of the biological impact of weak and hyperweak physico-chemical factors. It is believed that such factors operate even below the trigger threshold for protective biological mechanisms and are therefore capable of accumulating at the subcellular level. The so-called 'kT-problem' is discussed in detail, and the interference mechanisms of the molecular gyroscope and of molecular states in an idealized protein cavity are suggested as candidate solutions.

Several physical effects and methodological issues relating to the ground state of an oscillator are considered. Even in the simplest case of an ideal lossless harmonic oscillator, its ground state exhibits properties that are unusual from the classical point of view. In particular, the mean value of the product of two non-negative observables, kinetic and potential energies, is negative in the ground state. It is shown that semiclassical and rigorous quantum approaches yield substantially different results for the ground state energy fluctuations of an oscillator with finite losses. The dependence of zero-point fluctuations on the boundary conditions is considered. Using this dependence, it is possible to transmit information without emitting electromagnetic quanta. Fluctuations of electromagnetic pressure of zero-point oscillations are analyzed, and the corresponding mechanical friction is considered. This friction can be viewed as the most fundamental mechanism limiting the quality factor of mechanical oscillators. Observation of these effects exceeds the possibilities of contemporary experimental physics but almost undoubtedly will be possible in the near future.

The role of prominent Soviet physicist B I Davydov in the development of our understanding of diffusion is briefly reviewed, with emphasis on the ideas he put forward in the 1930s: introducing additional partial derivatives into diffusion equations and extending diffusion concepts to phase space.