Test des schwachen Äquivalenzprinzips mit Antimaterie

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Markus Kurt Oberthaler
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Kern- und Elementarteilchenphysik, Quantenmechanik, Relativitätstheorie, Felder ; Optik, Quantenoptik und Physik der Atome, Moleküle und Plasmen
• Förderung: Förderung von 2013 bis 2018
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 234920277

• Erstellungsjahr: 2019

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

It is a very well experimentally tested fact that matter is accelerated by the earth’s mass independent of its decomposition – this is known as the weak equivalence principle. So far there is no direct test that this also holds for anti-matter. Thus it is an experimental challenge to confirm the weak equivalence principle explicitly and directly. Since anti-matter can only be produced at CERN it is the goal of different collaborations to reach this goal. The collaboration AEgIS is pursuing the goal by realizing a beam of anti-hydrogen at low energies but also implies that deviations from straight flight due to gravity are only few tens of micrometer. Within this project we have investigated the potential of a device developed in the context of quantum atom optics – a moiré deflectometer – for detecting these small changes in position. In this project we successfully demonstrated the moiré deflectometer for anti-protons. An important result in preparation for the realization of anti-hydrogen. The results have been published in Nature Communications. This setup has been further improved protons leading to a sensitive device for detecting electric fields as low as 22 µV/V/√Hz. The test of gravitational acceleration of anti-hydrogen is still pending mainly due to the lack of an intensive anti-hydrogen source. Currently no anti-hydrogen can be produced due to a two-year shutdown.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• A moiré deflectometer for antimatter. Nat. Commun., 2014, Vol. 5, 4538
  Aghion, S.; Ahlén, O.; Amsler, C.; Ariga, A.; Ariga, T.; Belov, A. S.; Berggren, K.; Bonomi, G.; Bräunig, P.; Bremer, J.; Brusa, R. S.; Cabaret, L.; Canali, C.; Caravita, R.; Castelli, F.; Cerchiari, G.; Cialdi, S.; Comparat, D.; Consolati, G.; ... & Zmeskal, J.
  
• Probing electric and magnetic fields with a moiré deflectometer. Nuclear instruments and methods in physics research A, 2017, Vol. 862 49
  Lansonneur, P.; Bräunig, P.; Demetrio, A.; Müller, S.R.; Nedelec, P. & Oberthaler, M.K.
  
• Progress toward a large-scale ion Talbot-Lau interferometer. Physical Review A, 2017, Vol. 96, 063604
  Demetrio, Andrea; Müller, Simon R.; Lansonneur, Pierre & Oberthaler, Markus K.