The Production and Study of Cold Antihydrogen

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This project focuses on the production of cold atoms of antihydrogen and the ultimate high-precision spectroscopy measurement of the 1S-2S transition frequency. The experiments utilize a nested Penning trap in which cold positrons and antiprotons can be allowed to combine, and the resulting atoms of hydrogen then trapped within the same magnetic structure, where they can be spectroscopically analyzed. The experiments will be performed at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility at CERN as part of an international collaboration that will involve research groups from Harvard University and NIST in the United States, from the Max Planck Institut fur Quantenoptik, the Institut fur Kernphysik, and the University of Bonn in Germany, and from the University of Amsterdam in Holland. Funding for the AD construction is provided through a Japanese contribution and through CERN. It is expected that the technical difficulties associated with the experiment will prompt the development of new tools and techniques that can find utilization in a number of areas in physics and chemistry, and partial support is provided by the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.