Particle Physics Aspects of Antihydrogen Studies with ALPHA at CERN

We discuss aspects of antihydrogen studies, that relate to particle physics ideas and techniques, within the context of the ALPHA experiment at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator facility. We review the fundamental physics motivations for antihydrogen studies, and their potential physics reach. We argue that initial spectroscopy measurements, once antihydrogen is trapped, could provide competitive tests of CPT, possibly probing physics at the Planck Scale. We discuss some of the particle detection techniques used in ALPHA. Preliminary results from commissioning studies of a partial system of the ALPHA Si vertex detector are presented, the results of which highlight the power of annihilation vertex detection capability in antihydrogen studies.Comment: Invited talk at Pbar08 - Workshop on Cold Antimatter Plasmas and Application to Fundamental Physics, Okinawa, Japan, 2008. 14 pages, 8 figure

Synthesis of trans-(+/-)-1,2,3,3a,4a,5,6,7-Octaphenyl-3aH,4aH-dicyclopenta[b,e][1,4]dithiin by Dimerization and Further Rearrangement of the Transient 2,3,4,5-Tetraphenyl-2,4-cyclopentadiene-1-thione

Control of the radial profile of trapped antiproton clouds is critical to trapping antihydrogen. We report detailed measurements of the radial manipulation of antiproton clouds, including areal density compressions by factors as large as ten, achieved by manipulating spatially overlapped electron plasmas. We show detailed measurements of the near-axis antiproton radial profile, and its relation to that of the electron plasma. We also measure the outer radial profile by ejecting antiprotons to the trap wall using an octupole magnet