Laser-cooled Be+ for improved antihydrogen trapping and magnetometry.

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We will laser-cool Be+ ions in a Penning trap adapted for antihydrogen formation and trapping. The laser-cooled Be+ will be used for two separate purposes to assist in the studies of antihydrogen. The first part of the project will focus on using the cold Be+ to sympathetically cool positrons, and thereby produce colder antihydrogen. This will allow increased antihydrogen production and the production of colder antihydrogen. This should also allow for the use of more positrons than were hitherto possible. With this assistance we expect to learn more about the formation process and ultimately increase the trapping rates of antihydrogen into a magnetic trap by at least an order of magnitude, something that will greatly accelerate precision measurements allowing for increased precision. Additionally cold Be+ will be used for in-situe magnetometry of the magnetic fields in our antihydrogen traps. Particularly for antimatter gravity measurements this is of great importance, but as the precision on the spectroscopy measurements increase knowledge of the magnetic field will ultimately limit the precision. A particular problem currently not addressed is measuring low magnetic fields, where the currently applied technique fails.