PHYSICS: The First Antiatoms

▪ 1997

      It has been known for decades that each fundamental particle in nature has its antiparticle. The first antiparticle to be discovered, in 1932, was the positron, identical to the negatively charged electron but having a positive electric charge. The negatively charged antiproton, the antiparticle of the positively charged proton, was first produced in 1955. The existence of a whole set of antiparticles argues for the possibility of antiatoms and bulk antimatter, identical to atoms and "normal" matter except for the reversal of electric charge and certain other quantum properties of its constituent particles. On the other hand, it is a fact that the collision of a particle and its antiparticle results in the immediate annihilation of both particles. Thus, although it may be easy to envisage an atom of the simplest element, hydrogen (made up of one proton and one electron), matched by an atom of antihydrogen (made up of an antiproton and a positron), the antiatom would survive only as long as it did not meet a normal atom.

      The apparent symmetry between normal matter and antimatter, juxtaposed with the observation that the universe appears to consist exclusively of normal matter, has long been a puzzle to physicists and cosmologists. Recent developments in experimental technique have made it possible to test this symmetry to very high precision, which makes the goal of producing antihydrogen in the laboratory of major importance to the continued study of both matter and antimatter.

      In early 1996 a team of physicists reported achieving that goal, although fleetingly, in the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) storage facility at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) near Geneva. The team, led by Walter Oelert of the Institute for Nuclear Physics Research, Jülich, Ger., began with a stored beam of antiprotons circulating in the ring and squirted a jet of xenon atoms across its path. Interaction between the xenon and the antiprotons sometimes produced pairs of electrons and positrons, and very occasionally one of the positrons teamed up with an antiproton, forming an atom of antihydrogen. Once made, the neutral antiatoms left the magnetic confinement of the storage ring and were detected. Over the course of three weeks, the experimenters reported the detection of nine such antiatoms, which existed for an average of 40 billionths of a second before they annihilated with normal matter.

      If scientists can create, trap, and then isolate antihydrogen atoms for times on the order of thousandths of a second or longer, they can make extremely precise comparisons of the properties of atoms and antiatoms, including the way that gravity affects them, and so carry out a very searching test of matter-antimatter symmetry. Such work was being planned both at CERN and at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The results in turn could provide clues as to why normal matter seems to dominate the universe.

      (DAVID G.C. JONES)

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