Physicists develop a laser to control antimatter
Scientific group from the collaboration ALPHA at CERN said that they were the first in the world to succeed in an antimatter control experiment thanks to the use of a laser system developed in Canada, which cools the samples to a temperature close to absolute zero.
New experiment and its results
A special program of experiments ALPHA, the main task of which was to trap neutral antihydrogen in a magnetic trap, was launched back in 2011. It was in that year that engineers for the first time in the world managed to fix a couple of hundred antihydrogen atoms in an antiproton moderator for 15 minutes.
And currently engineers from the University of British Columbia working in the ALPHA program, developed a laser that was able not only to fix, but also to manipulate antimatter.
Laser manipulation technology has been around for 40 years. It was they who made a formative revolution in operating atomic physics and made it possible to carry out a whole range of experiments, which were then awarded the Nobel Prize.
But now scientists have succeeded in applying this technology to antimatter for the first time in the world.
After all, laser control of antimatter in fact opens up wide opportunities for a huge number of innovative developments in physics.
Already at the moment, ALPHA engineers are working on the HAICU project, according to which completely new quantum methods of studying antimatter are being developed.
In addition, by performing cooling of antimatter, engineers will be able to conduct a variety of precision experiments, which are needed to gain a deeper understanding of the key parameters of antimatter.
So scientists hope to finally shed light on the question of why the universe consists mostly parts of matter, and not of equal parts of matter and antimatter, as suggested by the model of the Big explosion?
In addition, successful experiments with antimatter have brought scientists one step closer to the possibility of get the world's first molecules from antimatter by assembling antiatoms together thanks to laser technology manipulation.
Thus, scientists want to get an answer to the question of how antimatter will interact with gravity and, thus, realize symmetry in physics.
As scientists assure, the answers to these questions will fundamentally change the whole approach to the study of antimatter and the general understanding of our Universe as a whole.
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