From Swansea University via the American Association for the Advancement of Science' EurekAlert, March 31:
The result opens the door to considerably more precise studies of the response of antimatter to light and of how it behaves under the influence of gravity
Swansea University physicists, as leading members of the ALPHA collaboration at CERN, have demonstrated laser cooling of antihydrogen atoms for the first time. The groundbreaking achievement produces colder antimatter than ever before and enables an entirely new class of experiments, helping scientists learn more about antimatter in future.
In a paper published today in Nature, the collaboration reports that the temperature of antihydrogen atoms trapped inside a magnetic bottle is reduced when the atoms scatter light from an ultraviolet laser beam, slowing the atoms down and reducing the space they occupy in the bottle -- both vital aspects of future more detailed studies of the properties of antimatter.
In addition to showing that the energy of the antihydrogen atoms was decreased, the physicists also found a reduction in the range of wavelengths that the cold atoms can absorb or emit light on, so the spectral line (or colour band) is narrowed due to the reduced motion.
This latter effect is of particular interest, as it will allow a more precise determination of the spectrum which in turn reveals the internal structure of the antihydrogen atoms.
Antimatter is a necessity in the most successful quantum mechanical models of particle physics. It became available in the laboratory nearly a century ago with the discovery of the positively charged positron, the antimatter counterpart of the negatively charged electron.
When matter and antimatter come together annihilation occurs; a striking effect wherein the original particles disappear. Annihilation can be observed in the laboratory and is even used in medical diagnostic techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) scans. However, antimatter presents a conundrum. An equal amount of antimatter and matter formed in the Big Bang, but this symmetry is not preserved today as antimatter seems to be virtually absent from the visible universe....
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