Northwestern University Traps a Single Positron for Months
A team led by Gerald Gabrielse at Northwestern University used a single positron Penning trap to confine individual positrons in a vacuum near absolute zero for several months using electromagnetic fields, without destroying the particles, allowing for repeated measurements. According to the American Physical Society, the new device is expected to improve the precision of antimatter measurements by about 30 times.
Northwestern University Traps a Single Positron for Months
A team led by Gerald Gabrielse at Northwestern University has used a single-positron Penning trap to confine a single positron (the antimatter counterpart of an electron) in a vacuum near absolute zero for several months using electromagnetic fields. The process does not destroy the particle, allowing for repeated measurements.
According to the American Physical Society, the new device is expected to improve the precision of antimatter measurements by about 30 times. So far, the experiment has not revealed any unexpected differences between positrons and electrons. However, if future measurements show that the two respond differently to magnetic fields, the laws explaining the behavior of matter and antimatter would need to be rewritten.
Source: WIRED
