CERN Accelerating science

Article
Report number	arXiv:1912.03163
Title	Stimulated decay and formation of antihydrogen atoms
Author(s)	Wolz, Tim (CERN) ; Malbrunot, Chloé (CERN) ; Vieille-Grosjean, Mélissa (LAC, Orsay) ; Comparat, Daniel (LAC, Orsay)
Publication	2020-04-22
Imprint	2019-12-06
Number of pages	17
In:	Phys. Rev. A 101 (2020) 043412
DOI	10.1103/PhysRevA.101.043412 (publication)
Subject category	physics.atom-ph ; Other Fields of Physics
Accelerator/Facility, Experiment	CERN AD
Abstract	Antihydrogen atoms are routinely formed at the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN in a wide range of Rydberg states. To perform precision measurements, experiments rely on ground state antimatter atoms which are currently obtained only after spontaneous decay. In order to enhance the number of atoms in ground state, we propose and assess the efficiency of different methods to stimulate their decay. First, we investigate the use of THz radiation to simultaneously couple all n-manifolds down to a low lying one with sufficiently fast spontaneous emission toward ground state. We further study a deexcitation scheme relying on state-mixing via microwave and/or THz light and a coupled (visible) deexcitation laser. We obtain close to unity ground state fractions within a few tens of microseconds for a population initiated in the n=30 manifold. Finally, we study how the production of antihydrogen atoms via stimulated radiative recombination can favourably change the initial distribution of states and improve the overall number of ground-state atoms when combined with the stimulated deexcitation proposed.
Copyright/License	preprint: (License: arXiv nonexclusive-distrib 1.0) publication: © 2020-2025 authors (License: CC-BY-4.0)

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