Speaker
Description
The antiProton Unstable Matter Annihilation (PUMA) experiment at CERN studies the distribution of protons and neutrons in the nuclear density tail using low-energy antiprotons. By studying stable and short-lived nuclei, PUMA investigates surface phenomena such as nuclear halos and neutron skins. The experiment leverages the sensitivity of antiprotons to both neutrons and protons, with the neutron-to-proton annihilation ratio serving as the key observable. [1]
The controlled annihilation of antiprotons and the ions of interest takes place in a Penning-Malmberg trap. The antiproton plasma is cooled by an overlapping electron plasma and compressed by applying the rotating wall technique. This enables storage of the antiproton plasma for a sufficiently long time to transport it to ISOLDE. There, the antiproton plasma is mixed with the plasma of the ions of interest.
The Charged particle Analysis Trap (CAT) was built to develop a procedure suitable for these steps. It is a replica of the PUMA Penning trap, easier accessible and offers more diagnostic tools.
In this contribution, the current status of the PUMA experiment will be discussed, as well as recent advances in the CAT-trap. The main goals of the CAT-trap are to provide a detailed characterization of an electron plasma by non-destructive diagnostics using a vector analyzer. Furthermore, the mixing of ions and electrons, as well as the cooling of negative ions with electrons, are studied in order to mimic the processes in the PUMA Penning trap.
[1] T. Aumann et al., Eur. Phys. J. A (2022) 58:88
| Academic level | PhD student |
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