Design of a Radial TPC for Antihydrogen Gravity Measurement with ALPHA-g

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and simulation of a radial Time Projection Chamber (rTPC) detector for the ALPHA-g experiment, aiming to measure antihydrogen's gravitational interaction with matter.

Contribution

It introduces a novel rTPC detector concept and demonstrates its simulated performance for antihydrogen gravity measurement.

Findings

Simulated detector performance meets positional accuracy requirements.

Reconstruction software effectively determines antihydrogen annihilation points.

The design supports the first direct measurement of antimatter gravity.

Abstract

The gravitational interaction of antimatter and matter has never been directly probed. ALPHA-g is a novel experiment that aims to perform the first measurement of the antihydrogen gravitational mass. A fundamental requirement for this new apparatus is a position sensitive particle detector around the antihydrogen trap which provides information about antihydrogen annihilation location. The proposed detector is a radial Time Projection Chamber, or \textit{rTPC}, whose concept is being developed at TRIUMF. A simulation of the detector and the development of the reconstruction software, used to determine the antihydrogen annihilation point, is presented alongside with the expected performance of the rTPC.