Detection of low energy antimatter with emulsions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that emulsion detectors with high spatial resolution are highly effective for detecting low-energy positrons, enabling advancements in antimatter quantum interferometry.

Contribution

The authors developed a new emulsion detector with enhanced silver bromide content and proved its high efficiency in detecting low-energy positrons, facilitating antimatter interferometry.

Findings

High sensitivity of emulsion detectors to 10-20 keV positrons

Successful detection of low-energy antimatter particles

Potential for matter-wave interferometry with positrons

Abstract

Emulsion detectors feature a very high position resolution and consequently represent an ideal device when particle detection is required at the micrometric scale. This is the case of quantum interferometry studies with antimatter, where micrometric fringes have to be measured. In this framework, we designed and realized a new emulsion based detector characterized by a gel enriched in terms of silver bromide crystal contents poured on a glass plate. We tested the sensitivity of such a detector to low energy positrons in the range 10-20 keV. The obtained results prove that nuclear emulsions are highly efficient at detecting positrons at these energies. This achievement paves the way to perform matter-wave interferometry with positrons using this technology.