Abstract
A beam of relativistic antihydrogen atoms, the bound state (), can be created by circulating the beam of an antiproton storage ring through an internal gas target. An antiproton that passes through the Coulomb field of a nucleus of charge will create pairs, and antihydrogen will form when a positron is created in a bound rather than a continuum state about the antiproton. The cross section for this process is calculated to be pb for antiproton momenta above 6 GeV/c. The gas target of Fermilab Accumulator experiment E760 has already produced ∼34 unobserved antihydrogen atoms, and a sample of ∼760 is expected in 1995 from the successive experiment E835. No other source of antihydrogen exists. A simple method for detecting relativistic antihydrogen is proposed and method outlined of measuring the antihydrogen Lamb shift to ∼1%.
- Received 9 June 1993
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.49.3228
©1994 American Physical Society