Real-time antiproton annihilation vertexing with sub-micron resolution

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel vertexing detector based on a modified mobile camera sensor that achieves sub-micron accuracy in real-time antiproton annihilation vertexing, significantly advancing antihydrogen gravity measurement capabilities.

Contribution

The introduction of a camera sensor-based vertexing detector with 0.62 micrometer accuracy, enabling real-time antiproton vertexing and improved calibration for antihydrogen experiments.

Findings

Achieved 0.62 μm vertexing accuracy for antiprotons.

Demonstrated 35-fold improvement over previous methods.

Sensor enables in-situ calibration reducing systematic errors.

Abstract

The primary goal of the AEgIS experiment is to precisely measure the free fall of antihydrogen within Earth's gravitational field. To this end, a cold ~50K antihydrogen beam has to pass through two grids forming a moir\'e deflectometer before annihilating onto a position-sensitive detector, which shall determine the vertical position of the annihilation vertex relative to the grids with micrometric accuracy. Here we introduce a vertexing detector based on a modified mobile camera sensor and experimentally demonstrate that it can measure the position of antiproton annihilations with an accuracy of $0.62^{+0.40}_{-0.22}\mu m$, which represents a 35-fold improvement over the previous state-of-the-art for real-time antiproton vertexing. Importantly, these antiproton detection methods are directly applicable to antihydrogen. Moreover, the sensitivity to light of the sensor enables the in-situ calibration of the moir\'e deflectometer, significantly reducing systematic errors. This sensor emerges as a breakthrough technology for achieving the \aegis scientific goals and has been selected as the basis for the development of a large-area detector for conducting antihydrogen gravity measurements.