Recent successes in confining antimatter in the form of positron and antiproton plasmas have created new scientific and technological opportunities. Plasma techniques have been the cornerstone of experimental work in this area, and this is likely to be true for the foreseeable future. Work by a number of groups on trapping antimatter plasmas is summarized, and an overview of the promises and challenges in this field is presented. Topics relating to positron plasmas include the use of positrons to study the unique properties of electron–positron plasmas, the interaction between positrons and ordinary matter, and the laboratory modeling of positron-annihilation processes in interstellar media. The availability of cold, trapped antiprotons and positrons makes possible the production of neutral antimatter in the form of antihydrogen. This is expected to enable precise comparisons of the properties of matter and antimatter, including tests of fundamental symmetries and the measurement of the interaction of antimatter with gravity.

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Antimatter plasmas and antihydrogen

Strong equivalence, Lorentz and CPT violation, anti-hydrogen spectroscopy and gamma-ray burst polarimetry☆

In a first step toward generating an electron–positron plasma, a proof‐of‐principle experiment is reported in which externally injected slow positrons are trapped in a magnetic mirror configuration by electron cyclotron resonance heating. With a primary flux of only 530 slow positrons/s from a 600 μCi Na‐22 positron source/moderator system, an estimated equilibrium density of 5×102 cm−3 is obtained in a 20 cm3 volume. With an appropriate increase of the injected positron flux, densities in the 107 cm−3 range can be expected.

R.J. Hughes

Papers

Anti-hydrogen physics