Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in an international collaboration led by Canadians, used microwave spectroscopy – one of the most sensitive techniques for probing the structure of atoms – to manipulate antihydrogen. Their work is published today in the prestigious journal, Nature.

Hydrogen is considered the fundamental building block of physics; by comparing it with its antimatter counterpart, scientists hope to answer a crucial question: if antimatter and matter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang, where did all the antimatter go?

91��ɫ physics graduate students Chanpreet Amole and Andrea Capra worked on the experiment and are co-authors on the Nature paper, along with their supervisor, Professor Scott Menary. The collaboration, dubbed ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment), includes scientists from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Sweden, the UK and the US. Five Canadian institutions are represented: University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, 91��ɫ and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle and nuclear physics lab.

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Amole and Capra logged 50-hour weeks at CERN in Geneva, preparing the antihydrogen sample and assisting with measurements.

“Every day was a learning experience,” says Amole. “At CERN, you get to work with some of the top minds in the world. Many times, [one of the scientists] would casually walk in and strike up a conversation on some very complex, yet interesting physics phenomenon that would just blow your mind.”

The experiment involved confining anti-atoms in a magnetic trap and irradiating them with microwaves. Precise tuning of the microwave frequency and magnetic field enabled researchers to hit an internal resonance that made atoms literally jump out of the trap and reveal information about their properties. Researchers at SFU designed the apparatus for this latest experiment, working closely with PhD candidates Mohammad Ashkezari of SFU and Tim Friesen from the University of Calgary. Meanwhile, researchers from the Vancouver-based TRIUMF laboratory and 91��ɫ teased faint signals from a sophisticated detector system, pinpointing matter-antimatter annihilation events.

Menary, professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, , says the current experiment represents the collaboration’s biggest milestone to date.

“It was a scientific tour de force just to trap the antihydrogen atoms. Now we’re actually doing physics with them. This, in my mind, is an even bigger achievement,” he says.

ALPHA-Canada researchers played a key role in two other recent antimatter milestones: in November 2010, ALPHA scientists successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time, and in June 2011, they demonstrated they could hold on to them for 1,000 seconds.

“For decades, scientists have wanted to study the intrinsic properties of antimatter atoms in the hope of finding clues that might help answer fundamental questions about our universe,” says lead author Mike Hayden, physicist with SFU. “In the middle of the last century, physicists were developing and using microwave techniques to study ordinary atoms like hydrogen. Now, 60 or 70 years down the road, we have just witnessed the first-ever microwave interactions with an anti-atom.”

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“We’re a long way off from being able to actually bottle antimatter, like in the movie Angels and Demons, but it was important to show that we could trap it for a longer period of time,” said (right), professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. Menary works on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment, dubbed ALPHA, at the (CERN). In November 2010, ALPHA scientists successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time – but only for a fraction of a second.

“The first time, we trapped [the antihydrogen atoms] for a tenth of a second, which is actually long enough to study them,” Menary said. “But naturally we had people asking, ‘why can you only hold on to them for a tenth of second?’ This experiment demonstrates that we can hold on to them for much longer – in theory, for as long as we want,” he said.

See an online gallery of the .

ALPHA physicists, including a core team of scientists from Canadian universities, have been working to trap and study antihydrogen – the antimatter twin of hydrogen – which may help explain the “lost half of the universe.” During the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts; scientists are left with the question, where did all the antimatter go? Researchers are tackling that riddle by taking one of the best-known systems in physics, the hydrogen atom, and investigating whether its antimatter counterpart behaves in exactly the same manner.

Makoto Fujiwara, the study’s lead author, said: “We know we have confined antihydrogen atoms for at least 1,000 seconds. That’s almost as long as one period in hockey! This is potentially a game changer in antimatter research.” Fujiwara is a research scientist at , Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.

Scientists at CERN were able to make antihydrogen almost a decade ago, but they couldn’t study it; antimatter annihilates when it comes into contact with matter, converting to energy and other particles. ALPHA scientists succeeded by constructing a sophisticated “magnetic bottle” using a state-of-the-art superconducting magnet to suspend the antiatoms away from the walls of the device and keep them isolated long enough to study them.

Canadian researchers are playing leading roles in the antihydrogen detection and data analysis aspects of the project. The collaboration includes scientists from University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and TRIUMF.

Above: The TRIUMF cyclotron at the University of British Columbia. Photo courtesy of TRIUMF.

The next step for ALPHA is to start performing measurements on trapped antihydrogen; this is due to get underway later this year. The first step is to illuminate the trapped antiatoms with microwaves, to determine if they absorb precisely the same frequencies (or energies) as their matter twins.

ALPHA-Canada and its research is supported by the (NSERC), TRIUMF, (AIF), the and (FQRNT).

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The DZero collaboration of scientists at the submitted a finding to the journal Physical Review D, reporting significant differences between matter and antimatter, which run up against current theories of particle physics. Their research indicates a one per cent difference between the production of pairs of muons and pairs of antimuons in the decay of B mesons produced in high-energy collisions at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle collider. An independent DZero measurement carried out by 91��ɫ researchers and submitted to Physical Review D last month further verifies these results.

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Scientists believe that during the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in equal proportions; they have been searching for minute differences between the two in the hopes they will help us understand why our universe is composed primarily of matter.

Physicists theorize that a physical process preferentially consumes the antimatter in the universe, leaving only matter behind; they refer to this process as “CP violation”. However, the standard model of particle physics predicts very small amounts of this phenomenon, insufficient to account for the dominance of matter in the universe. The findings of 91��ɫ physics Professor , Canada Research Chair in Experimental Particle Physics, and her colleagues put forth new evidence of CP violation as a key factor.

“These results are very exciting,” says Taylor, who is also a member of the tight-knit DZero b-quark physics group, which led the research. “This puts us one step closer to answering the big questions about matter-antimatter asymmetry – where did the antimatter go, and how was it consumed?”

Taylor and 91��ɫ graduate student Steven Beale looked for another particle, called a D_s meson, which is often produced along with muons in b-quark decays.

“Muons also originate from the decays of other particles, so it was important to try and verify that the muons originated from the b-quark,” says Taylor.

The two independent analyses are consistent: a combined result shows evidence of a source of CP violation in the decay of b-quarks.

DZero is an international experiment of about 500 physicists from 86 institutions in 19 countries. It is supported by the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and a number of international funding agencies.

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy, operated under contract by Fermi Research Alliance, a limited liability company.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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