Particle Physics Aspects of Antihydrogen Studies with ALPHA at CERN

TL;DR

This paper reviews antihydrogen research at CERN's ALPHA experiment, emphasizing particle physics motivations, detection techniques, and preliminary results that could enable CPT symmetry tests and probe physics at the Planck scale.

Contribution

It introduces particle physics techniques in antihydrogen studies at ALPHA and presents initial detector results relevant for fundamental physics tests.

Findings

Detection of annihilation vertices demonstrates effective particle identification.

Preliminary detector results show promise for antihydrogen spectroscopy.

Potential to test CPT symmetry at unprecedented precision.

Abstract

We discuss aspects of antihydrogen studies, that relate to particle physics ideas and techniques, within the context of the ALPHA experiment at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator facility. We review the fundamental physics motivations for antihydrogen studies, and their potential physics reach. We argue that initial spectroscopy measurements, once antihydrogen is trapped, could provide competitive tests of CPT, possibly probing physics at the Planck Scale. We discuss some of the particle detection techniques used in ALPHA. Preliminary results from commissioning studies of a partial system of the ALPHA Si vertex detector are presented, the results of which highlight the power of annihilation vertex detection capability in antihydrogen studies.