Trapped neutral matter and antimatter - new ways to probe fundamental physics

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• Stefan Eriksson (Swansea)
• Friday 03 December 2010, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Vincent Boyer.

Recent advances are paving the way for a paradigm shift in neutral atom trapping. In the past effort has mainly been focused on developing new and better techniques to confine and manipulate ever more atomic species and even molecules. Today, thanks to the achieved precise control of the trapped sample and its isolation from the environment, attention can be turned to using the sample for studies of fundamental phenomena. Examples range widely from many-body physics with ultracold atoms to cavity QED and studies of basic concepts of quantum mechanics such as entanglement.

Research with trapped neutral antimatter is catching up rapidly. The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has now succeeded in trapping neutral antihydrogen and thereby staked out the way towards precision measurements of the spectrum of antihydrogen. This result is a first step towards comparing the spectrum of antihydrogen with the well known spectrum of atomic hydrogen, a comparison which could ultimately elucidate some of the mysteries surrounding the fundamental symmetries of Nature.

This talk summarises progress in using nano-optics to detect phenomena in degenerate quantum gases, in using atom chip BEC interferometry to measure small energy differences, and in trapping antihydrogen.

This talk is part of the Cold Atoms series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Cold Atoms
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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