ALPHA team gains first glimpse of an "anti-atomic" fingerprint

March 12, 2012

A little more than a year after the ALPHA collaboration trapped anti-hydrogen atoms (the anti-matter partner to normal hydrogen) for the very first time in history, another groundbreaking scientific advance was made by the team. In their latest paper published online by the journal Nature, the ALPHA collaboration at CERN reported on a measurement, spearheaded by their Canadian collaborators, which measured  for the first time an intrinsic property of anti-matter atoms.

Using microwave spectroscopy - one of the most sensitive techniques for probing the structure of atoms - the ALPHA team was able to make ultra-precise measurements."This study demonstrates the feasibility of applying microwave spectroscopy to fiendishly difficult-to-handle anti-atoms," says co-author Walter Hardy from UBC Physics & Astronomy. "ALPHA is about to enter an intensive upgrade phase that promises to create an ever-clearer picture of the inner structure of anti-matter atoms."
 
"For decades, scientists have wanted to study the intrinsic properties of anti-matter atoms in the hope of finding clues that might help answer fundamental questions about our universe," says lead author Mike Hayden, a physicist with Simon Fraser University and a UBC Physics & Astronomy Alumnus.
 
One of the fundamental questions scientists seek to answer is how, while the currently accepted laws of physics predict symmetry - when the universe began with the Big Bang, supposedly an equal amount of anti-matter and matter were generated - the absence of anti-matter in our universe suggests discrepancies between matter and anti-matter. Comparing the atomic properties between the two will yield invaluable information for why the universe is dominated by normal matter, while the anti-matter has all but disappeared.
 
Hardy and Hayden designed the apparatus for this latest experiment, working closely with PhD candidates Mohammad Ashkezari from SFU and Tim Friesen from the University of Calgary. Researchers from the Vancouver-based TRIUMF laboratory and York University, led by ALPHA-Canada spokesperson Makoto Fujiwara (UBC Physics & Astronomy Alumnus) and Professor Scott Menary, respectively, teased faint signals from a sophisticated detector system, pinpointing matter-antimatter annihilation events.
 
For more information about the ALPHA collaboration, vist the following websites: