An Improved Zeeman Cooling Technique to Trap Antihydrogen Atoms

Avik Dayal

Broad Run High School

In this work, an improved Zeeman trapping technique was found to trap antihydrogen atoms assuming that antihydrogen has the same properties as hydrogen. The Java simulation of the Zeeman trapping technique set one high frequency laser emitting photons directly opposite of the source of antihydrogen atoms with several lower frequency lasers firing photons at the atom directly after it interacts with the photon from the high frequency laser, thereby accounting for the Doppler shift. This tested how many low frequency lasers would trap the atoms for the greatest amount of time. If this method were used to actually trap antihydrogen atoms, the experiment would have been done in space, which is the only place that the required vacuum could be found, and would provide a safer and cheaper location where antihydrogen could be stored. The averages of the maximum values for each amount of lasers were 526.66 time units for 2 lasers, 570 time units for 4 lasers, 699.2 time units for 8 lasers, and 727.56 time units for 16 lasers. It was determined that there was a relationship between the natural logarithm of the amount of lasers and the maximum lifespan of each test squared, giving the equation Li^2=A*ln(a)+B. 8 lasers were the most efficient number of lasers used even though 16 lasers trapped the atoms for a longer period of time. This improved technique would be able to improve the current Zeeman cooling technique by approximately 22.8%, according to the experiment's calculations.