A reservoir trap for antiprotons

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel reservoir trap system for antiprotons enabling long-term storage and reliable extraction, facilitating high-precision fundamental property comparisons independent of accelerator cycles.

Contribution

We developed a fail-safe reservoir trap technique for antiprotons with storage times over a year, supporting continuous high-precision measurements during accelerator downtimes.

Findings

Storage times > 1.08 years demonstrated

Fail-safe against 10-hour power cuts shown

Enables experiments during low-noise periods

Abstract

We have developed techniques to extract arbitrary fractions of antiprotons from an accumulated reservoir, and to inject them into a Penning-trap system for high-precision measurements. In our trap-system antiproton storage times > 1.08 years are estimated. The device is fail-safe against power-cuts of up to 10 hours. This makes our planned comparisons of the fundamental properties of protons and antiprotons independent from accelerator cycles, and will enable us to perform experiments during long accelerator shutdown periods when background magnetic noise is low. The demonstrated scheme has the potential to be applied in many other precision Penning trap experiments dealing with exotic particles.