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IT Home reported on October 22 that Northwestern University in the United States published an article on its website today saying its physicists had, for the first time, guided a single positron—the antimatter counterpart of an electron—into an extremely precisely controlled quantum state and “imprisoned” it for several months.
After capturing the fast-moving particle from radioactive decay, the scientists cooled it to near absolute zero. They then suspended the particle in a nearly perfect vacuum to prevent it from touching ordinary matter—if it did, it would disappear.
By capturing and cooling a positron this way, the scientists created a device called a “single-positron quantum cyclotron.” In this state, the positron essentially behaves much like an artificial atom with quantum energy levels, allowing scientists to precisely control and observe its state.
According to Northwestern University’s website, this advance could ultimately enable the most precise test of the fundamental symmetry between the electron and its antimatter counterpart.
According to the Standard Model of particle physics, electrons and positrons should be almost perfect mirror images. By measuring the positron’s magnetic properties with unprecedented precision and comparing them with those of the electron, physicists can subject this fundamental symmetry to its most stringent test yet.
If the measurements do not match expectations, scientists will, for the first time, reveal a problem with the Standard Model and provide new clues to many mysteries, including why ordinary matter, rather than antimatter, dominates the universe.
“Antimatter is familiar to the public because of science fiction,” said Professor Gerald Gabrielse, who led the research. “If you collide an electron and a positron, they both disappear. We call this ‘annihilation,’ a concept that has inspired the imaginations of science fiction writers. The biggest mystery of the universe is that the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. But if that were true, it would all be destroyed, and we would have nothing. Clearly there is a problem with this theory, and that is what we are trying to figure out.”
The study was published in Physical Review Letters on October 21. IT Home provides a link to the paper:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/gbkc-6nlj
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