ALPHA Antimatter Project at CERN

Fundamental Symmetry Tests with Trapped Antihydrogen

News:

Laser cooling of antihydrogen, published on Nature cover (Nature, 2021)
Investigation of fine structure and the Lamb shift in antihydrogen (Nature, 2020)
Observation of the 1S-2P Lyman-alpha transition in antihydrogen (Nature, 2018)
ALPHA-g antimatter gravity detector gets ready for the beam (IEEE Spectrum, 2018)
Characterization of the 1S-2S transition in antihydrogen (Nature, 2018)
Antihydrogen accumulation for fundamental symmetry tests (Nature Communications, 2017)
Observation of the hyperfine spectrum of antihydrogen (Nature, 2017)
First laser spectroscopy on antihydrogen atoms (Nature, 2016)
Fujiwara elected Fellow of American Physical Society
Improved charge limit on antihydrogen (Nature, 2016)
ALPHA-Canada team wins prestigeous NSERC Polanyi Prize (Feb, 2014, See the press release and video)
An experimental limit on the charge of antihydrogen (Nature Communications, 2014)
Towards a measurement of antimatter gravity (Nature Communications, 2013)
Proposal for laser cooling of antimatter atoms (January, 2013)
Fujiwara shares the John Dawson Award (April, 2012)
First spectroscopy on antimatter atoms (Nature, 2012)
Antihydrogen trapped for 1000 seconds (Nature Physics, 2011)
ALPHA-Canada hosts International Conference on Antiprotons: LEAP 2011 (April, 2011)
Antihydrogen: top science story for 2010 (PhysicsWorld, Dec, 2010)
Antimatter atoms capatured (Nature, 2010)

ALPHA Canada studetns and faculty members at CERN, Nov 17, 2010

The Science

ALPHA is an international collaboration based at CERN, which studies of antihydrogen atoms, the antimatter counterpart of the simplest atom, hydrogen. By comparisons of hydrogen and antihydrogen, the experiment hopes to understand fundamental symmetries between matter and antimatter.

ALPHA-Canada

The Canadian group (ALPHA-Canada) is a significant group in ALPHA, constituting more than 1/3 of the international collaboration. ALPHA-Canada consists of a dozen researchers and students from 5 Canadian institutions (UBC, Calgary, SFU, York, and TRIUMF). ALPHA-Canada plays a leading role in both the particle physics and the atomic spectroscopy aspects of the experiment. Current major projects we are involved in include:

ALPHA-2: Precision antihydrogen spectroscopy
ALPHA-g: Antihydrogen gravity measurement
HAICU: Development for quantum sensing techniques for antimatter

Students Opportunities

Trapping and spectroscopy of antihydrogen is a challenging task, and requires a wide variety of techniques ranging from ion and atom trapping, to manipulations of cold plasmas, to precision laser and microwave spectroscopy, to sophisticated particle physics detection and analysis. Hence it is an excellent training ground for students. Graduate students typically spend up to several months a year in Geneva to participate in the experiment. If you are interested in working with us, please contact any of ALPHA-Canada faculty members.