Experimental Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics: AEgIS
Does antihydrogen fall with the same acceleration as hydrogen? The principle of universality of free fall (or weak equivalence principle, WEP) states that all bodies fall with the same acceleration, independent of mass and composition. The WEP has been tested with very high precision for matter but never for antimatter. AEgIS is an experiment by a collaboration of physicists from all around the world to test the WEP with antiprotons at the European laboratory CERN, using the antiproton decelerator (AD), a facility unique in the world. The goal of the AEgIS experiment is a first direct measurement of the earth's gravitational acceleration with the one of simplest forms of electrically neutral antimatter, namely antihydrogen. In the first phase a measurement of the gravity force with 1% precision will be carried out by sending an antihydrogen beam lauched horizontally in a vacuum tube and by measuring the gravitational sag with a Moirè deflectometer and a position sensitive detector.
The activities of the AEgIS group of the INFN unit and of the Physics Department of the University of Pavia are connected with the Montecarlo simulation of the detectors used in the experiment, with the construction and handling of the external hodoscope for the measurement of the annihilation signals in the traps, with the data acquisition system of the apparatus and with the data analysis. For further information please visit the experiment website: AEgIS web page.
Staff: Andrea Fontana, Alberto Rotondi