
The PS210 experiment was the first experiment that led to the observation of
antihydrogen
Antihydrogen () is the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen. Whereas the common hydrogen atom is composed of an electron and proton, the antihydrogen atom is made up of a positron and antiproton. Scientists hope that studying antihydrogen may sh ...
atoms
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other ...
produced at the
Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
in 1995.
The antihydrogen atoms were produced in flight and moved at nearly the speed of light. They made unique electrical signals in detectors that destroyed them almost immediately after they formed by matter–
antimatter
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding subatomic particle, particles in "ordinary" matter, and can be thought of as matter with reversed charge and parity, or go ...
annihilation
In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons. The total energy a ...
.
Eleven signals were observed, of which two were attributed to other processes.
In 1997 similar observations were announced at
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...
from the
E862 experiment.
The first measurement demonstrated the existence of antihydrogen,
the second (with improved setup and intensity monitoring) measured the production rate.
Both experiments, one at each of the only two facilities with suitable
antiprotons, were stimulated by calculations which suggested the possibility of making very fast
antihydrogen
Antihydrogen () is the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen. Whereas the common hydrogen atom is composed of an electron and proton, the antihydrogen atom is made up of a positron and antiproton. Scientists hope that studying antihydrogen may sh ...
within existing circular
accelerators.
References
Further reading
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Particle experiments
CERN experiments
External links
PS210 experimentrecord on
INSPIRE-HEP
INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1 ...
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