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Title: CERN Can Now Produce Antihydrogen Atoms Eight Times Faster Than Before

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/11/21/0...

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.org: Physicists from Swansea University
have played the leading role in a scientific breakthrough at CERN, developing
an innovative technique that increases the antihydrogen trapping rate by a
factor of ten. The advancement, achieved as part of the international
Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) collaboration, has been
published in Nature Communications and could help answer one of the biggest
questions in physics: Why is there such a large imbalance between matter and
antimatter? According to the Big Bang theory, equal amounts were created at
the beginning of the universe, so why is the world around us made almost
entirely of matter? Antihydrogen is the "mirror version" of hydrogen, made
from an antiproton and a positron. Trapping and studying it helps scientists
explore how antimatter behaves, and whether it follows the same rules as
matter. Producing and trapping antihydrogen is an extremely complicated
process. Previous methods took 24 hours to trap just 2,000 atoms, limiting
the scope of experiments at ALPHA. The Swansea-led team has changed that.
Using laser-cooled beryllium ions, the team has demonstrated that it is
possible to cool positrons to less than 10 Kelvin (below -263C),
significantly colder than the previous threshold of about 15 Kelvin. These
cooler positrons dramatically boost the efficiency of antihydrogen production
and trapping -- allowing a record 15,000 atoms to be trapped in less than
seven hours.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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