Wednesday 23 January 2013 

Speaker: Stefan Eriksson (Swansea University)


Title: "The Spectroscopy of Antihydrogen" 

Abstract: The development of modern physics is closely linked
to advances in the understanding of the spectrum of hydrogen. 
The hydrogen atom’s stature lies in its simplicity and in 
the precision with which its spectrum can be measured and 
the accuracy achieved when comparing to theory. Today its
spectrum remains a valuable tool for determining the values
of fundamental constants and for challenging the limits of 
modern physics. Antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart,
should by the CPT theorem have the same spectrum as hydrogen.
Spectroscopy of antihydrogen with a competitive precision 
therefore constitutes a model-independent test of fundamental
symmetries.In this presentation I will report on progress with 
trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA apparatus at CERN. We have shown 
that antihydrogen atoms can be trapped for 1000 s. We have
demonstrated resonant quantum transitions in antihydrogen
by manipulating the internal spin state of antihydrogen atoms
so as to induce magnetic resonance transitions between hyperfine 
levels of the positronic ground state. I will discuss the background 
and experimental techniques which have enabled the collaboration to 
achieve these results. I will provide an outlook towards future 
experiments with antihydrogen at CERN.