IIHE invited seminar: Experiments at the antimatter factory of CERN (Elise Wursten)

Friday 12 Apr 2024, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Brussels

Abstract:
The Standard Model of Particle Physics is an extremely powerful model, but it is known to be incomplete. One of its issues is that it does not provide an explanation for the striking imbalance of matter over antimatter observed in our Universe. To better understand the properties of antimatter, the Antiproton Decelerator was inaugurated at CERN in 2000, providing a facility for dedicated studies of low-energy antiprotons and antihydrogen. Since then, an impressive amount of progress has been made, ranging from the efficient production, trapping and laser cooling of antihydrogen to extremely precise spectroscopic measurements and studies of its gravitational behaviour.
In this seminar, I will give an overview of the experiments at the antimatter factory of CERN, concisely summarizing their research objectives, their measurements concepts and highlighting the most important results and plans for the future.

Short bio:
Dr. Elise Wursten did her PhD at KULeuven, contributing to the neutron Electric Dipole Moment experiment (nEDM) at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, under supeervision of Prof. Nathal Severijns.
Interleaved with short periods as Visiting Scientist Fellow of the Max Planck Society, she was from 2018-2020 a CERN Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Scientist at the Ulmer Fundamental Symmetries Laboratory of RIKEN, Japan, working at the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) at the Antiproton Decelerator of CERN, Switzerland. Since 2021, she is a Special Postdoctoral Researcher affiliated to the Ulmer Fundamental Symmetries Laboratory of RIKEN, Japan, working again at the BASE experiment at CERN.