Transporting antimatter on roads across Europe: milestone achieved

An important milestone has been reached at the European nuclear research center CERN on the way to transporting antimatter to research facilities throughout Europe. This has been confirmed by the international research team BASE (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) after the transportation of a cloud of protons by truck across the site has now been evaluated. The next step is to repeat the experiment with antiprotons. The declared aim of the work is to make it possible to deliver antimatter via public roads to distant locations throughout Europe. There it can be studied better than at CERN itself.

As Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, which is involved in the work, explains, a so-called Penning trap is at the heart of the project. Electrically charged particles can be held in position in this trap using magnetic and electric fields, for example, to take measurements. However, this is about transport. This is necessary because although large quantities of antimatter are produced at CERN, they cannot be researched. The magnetic background noise from the huge particle accelerators is too great for this. The antimatter should therefore be brought to laboratories where its properties can be determined much more precisely. There is such a laboratory in Düsseldorf, for example. However, because antimatter is destroyed when it interacts with matter, this is complicated.

The team explains that the transport was successful with a robust, transportable and superconducting system that enables the addition and removal of antiprotons. The trap system is called BASE-STEP. It was already known that a proton cloud was extracted for the first time from the “Antimatter Factory” (AMF) at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and transported by truck across the CERN site. The team now explains the details in the journal Nature. The trap functioned for four hours without an external power supply and was then able to continue operating without any losses. This makes transportation “possible over long distances in normal road traffic”, adds first author Marcel Leonhardt.

Antimatter consists of anti-particles, i.e., particles that differ from conventional particles only in their opposite charge. Whether there really is no other difference and why the universe as we know it still only consists of conventional matter is one of the great mysteries of physics. To solve this, research into antimatter outside of CERN is needed. The transport of the proton cloud is an important step on the way to achieving this. The transport of antiprotons is planned for this year. Another research group is also planning to do this in its experiment.

(mho)