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Testing the Weak Equivalence Principle with an antimatter beam at CERN

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, , Citation M Kimura et al 2015 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 631 012047 DOI 10.1088/1742-6596/631/1/012047

1742-6596/631/1/012047

Abstract

The goal of the AEgIS experiment is to measure the gravitational acceleration of antihydrogen – the simplest atom consisting entirely of antimatter – with the ultimate precision of 1%. We plan to verify the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP), one of the fundamental laws of nature, with an antimatter beam. The experiment consists of a positron accumulator, an antiproton trap and a Stark accelerator in a solenoidal magnetic field to form and accelerate a pulsed beam of antihydrogen atoms towards a free-fall detector. The antihydrogen beam passes through a moiré deflectometer to measure the vertical displacement due to the gravitational force. A position and time sensitive hybrid detector registers the annihilation points of the antihydrogen atoms and their time-of-flight. The detection principle has been successfully tested with antiprotons and a miniature moiré deflectometer coupled to a nuclear emulsion detector.

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10.1088/1742-6596/631/1/012047