Physicists Hold Single Antimatter Particle for Months and Control Its Quantum States
The experiment could sharpen tests of CPT symmetry and help explain why matter dominates over antimatter, researchers said.
- Northwestern University physicists led by Professor Gerald Gabrielse and Thomas Myers successfully trapped a single positron for months, a breakthrough reported Wednesday in Physical Review Letters.
- Radioactive decay produces Positrons, but capturing them is difficult because contact with ordinary matter causes immediate annihilation, necessitating a specialized container without walls.
- Inside a custom-designed Penning trap, the team cooled the positron to 300 millikelvins—just 0.3 degrees above absolute zero—to isolate it within a near-perfect vacuum, preventing physical contact.
- This controlled state creates a 'one-positron quantum cyclotron,' allowing researchers to precisely measure the positron's magnetic moment and test CPT invariance within The Standard Model.
- Roni Harnik of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory noted this development enables testing basic symmetries, potentially explaining why matter—rather than antimatter—dominated the Universe after the Big Bang.
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25 Articles
Physicists Hold Single Antimatter Particle for Months and Control Its Quantum States
Physicists at Northwestern University have held a single positron -- the antimatter twin of the electron -- in a trap for months and manipulated it one quantum jump at a time. They call their setup a ‘one-positron quantum cyclotron.’ The post Physicists Hold Single Antimatter Particle for Months and Control Its Quantum States appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Antimatter. Mystery, promise of the future and, for many, a deaf threat of destruction. The word itself evokes spaceships driven by impossible reactions, weapons capable of razing entire planets and worlds and stars made of a substance that looks like our own reflected image. But antimatter does not belong to science fiction. It exists, we can produce it and even use it in medicine. What still costs us, and much, is to dominate it. Its secret is…
Why does the universe even exist? This question has been around physicists for decades. Now, for months, researchers turn a single antiparticle into a trap and want to unleash its greatest secret. A comparison with the electron could overturn everything.
In science fiction works, it causes explosions. In reality, there is little antimatter in space. US researchers have now managed to lock up a tiny particle for months.
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