This is one of the main scientific programs at SMI. Precision experiments at low energy are a complementary way to finding new physics as compared to the quest for achieving highest energies at accelerators. SMI is pursuing several experiments in this field:
Antihydrogen spectroscopy: Physical laws are believed to be invariant under the combined transformations of charge (C), parity (P), and time (T) reversal. This CPT symmetry implies that antimatter particles have exactly the same mass and charge as their particle counterparts. Within the ASACUSA program at the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN (CH), SMI is involved in the measurement of the ground-state hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen, the simplest antimatter atom consisting of a positron and an antiproton. [Read more...]
Antihydrogen gravity: The main focus of the AEgIS experiment at CERN-AD is a measurement of the gravitational interaction of antihydrogen using a slow antihydrogen beam, but this beam is also well suited for a measurement of the hyperfine splitting. [Read more...]
The VIP experiment (VIolation of the Pauli principle) at Laboratori Nationali di Gran Sasso (IT) tests whether a tiny violation of the Pauli principle can be found by searching for forbidden X-ray transitions to the ground state of copper occupied by three electrons instead of the normal two. [Read more...]
FLAIR, the Facility for Low-energy Antiproton and Ion Research, is a proposal to extend the FAIR facility presently under construction at Darmstadt (GE) to provide cooled beams of low-energy antiprotons. FLAIR could provide more antiprotons trapped per unit time than the AD of CERN and also provide continuous beam suitable for nuclear and particle physics type experiments. [Read more...]