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Mobile trap to move antimatter between research labs

11.11.2020

It is known that antimatter is a substance, the storage and transportation of which are fraught with many difficulties due to the fact that it, this antimatter, immediately seeks to destroy the material of the container in which it is being placed. And recently, CERN BASE scientists have found a way to safely move antimatter to scientific instruments in other laboratories, where scientists will use it to try to "reveal" some of the fundamental mysteries of our universe.

The Antimatter Decelerator (AD) facility is one of the few places on Earth where antimatter is produced. However, the specifics of the operation of this installation, in particular, the strongest magnetic fields used in it, make its location completely unsuitable for carrying out other experiments. And then there is the problem of transporting antimatter to other places more suitable for research.

BASE scientists have already completed the design of a mobile trap, which is called BASE-STEP. This setup is based on the principle of the well-known Penning trap, in which antiprotons are kept from contact with the walls of the container using electric and magnetic fields. Moreover, the BASE-STEP facility uses two independent Penning traps, one for receiving and releasing antimatter, and the other for its long-term storage in high vacuum.

CERN scientists have been using the new upgraded Penning traps for some time now, which are capable of storing antiprotons for 400 days. For comparison, we note that similar traps used back in 2011 ensured that antimatter was stored for no more than 16 minutes. And the big problem that BASE scientists had to face was the miniaturization of existing traps while maintaining their properties, i.e. no loss in antimatter storage time.

Both traps of the BASE-STEP installation are located inside a superconducting coil of a magnet that generates a field of 1 Tesla. This strong magnetic field prevents the antimatter from contacting the walls of the traps during the bumps and jolts that inevitably occur during transportation. To maintain the cryogenic temperature inside the trap and in the magnet windings, liquid helium is used, of which there is a supply sufficient for several hours of antimatter storage. The dimensions of the BASE-STEP trap are 1,9 x 1,6 x 0,8 m, and its weight does not exceed 1000 kilograms.

As scientists hope, research on antimatter, facilitated and accelerated by the possibility of its transportation, will eventually make it possible to find the answer to one of the most important fundamental questions of physics. This question is as follows - according to the existing theory, an equal amount of matter and antimatter appeared during the Big Bang. Today, in the accessible part of the universe around us, we observe only ordinary matter. So what exactly led to the emergence of such an imbalance, and where did almost all the antimatter go?

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