The Project
Precise laser and microwave spectroscopy of antimatter atoms – new techniques to manipulate antimatter
Winner
Dr. Masaki Hori
Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics
Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1
85748 Garching
Germany
Japanese citizen, Masaki Hori, aged 34, is currently stationed at the University of Tokyo as a special postdoctoral research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2003 he won the 19th Inoue prize for young researchers. He graduated from the University of Tokyo where he also completed his masters and doctorate in science. As well as submitting regularly to a number of publications, he is a reviewer for four international journals including the "Comments in Atomic and Molecular Physics" review.
Project Description
According to the CPT theorem of particle physics, the “antiworld” – constructed by replacing all the matter particles in the universe with antimatter, inverting their spatial configuration, and reversing the flow of time - would be indistinguishable from our real matter world. One cornerstone of this symmetry is that atoms made of antimatter, i.e. “antiatoms”, are expected to resonate at exactly the same characteristic optical and microwave frequencies as their matter counterparts; particles and their antiparticles are assumed to have exactly the same mass, and equal and opposite electric charge and magnetic moment. Any deviation, however small, would indicate that this fundamental symmetry of nature is broken.
Since the theorem is of such crucial importance in our understanding of the world, it is of the first importance to test it experimentally at the highest achievable level of precision. This project will synthesize three kinds of atoms containing antimatter and measure their atomic frequencies; new techniques to manipulate antiparticles will be developed to make these experiments possible.
