Improving the statistical analysis of anti-hydrogen free fall by using near edge events

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method for measuring gravity acceleration of anti-hydrogen by analyzing near-edge events in free fall experiments, which could enhance accuracy despite reduced event counts.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo simulation approach to utilize edge effects and quantum reflections for improved gravity measurement accuracy in anti-hydrogen free fall experiments.

Findings

Edge events provide additional gravity information.

Quantum reflections do not significantly degrade measurement accuracy.

Simulation results show potential for improved precision.

Abstract

An accurate evaluation of the gravity acceleration from the timing of free fall of anti-hydrogen atoms in the GBAR experiment requires to account for obstacles surrounding the anti-matter source. These obstacles reduce the number of useful events but may improve accuracy since the edges of the shadow of obstacles on the detection chamber depends on gravity, bringing additional information on the value of $g$. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to obtain the dispersion and give a qualitative understanding of the results by analysing the statistics of events close to an edge. We also study the effect of specular quantum reflections of anti-hydrogen on surfaces and show that they do not degrade the accuracy that much.