In-beam measurement of the hydrogen hyperfine splitting and prospects for antihydrogen spectroscopy.

ABSTRACT: Antihydrogen, the lightest atom consisting purely of antimatter, is an ideal laboratory to study the CPT symmetry by comparison with hydrogen. With respect to absolute precision, transitions within the ground-state hyperfine structure (GS-HFS) are most appealing by virtue of their small energy separation. ASACUSA proposed employing a beam of cold antihydrogen atoms in a Rabi-type experiment, to determine the GS-HFS in a field-free region. Here we present a measurement of the zero-field hydrogen GS-HFS using the spectroscopy apparatus of ASACUSA's antihydrogen experiment. The measured value of ν_HF=1,420,405,748.4(3.4) (1.6) Hz with a relative precision of 2.7 × 10^-9 constitutes the most precise determination of this quantity in a beam and verifies the developed spectro

SUBMITTER: Diermaier M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5472788 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature