The ALPHA experiment conducted at CERN involved successfully trapping of antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes to enable scientists to carry a detailed study of their properties. Details of the report were published by the Nature Physics journal online.
Antimatter trap
ALPHA spokesperson, Jeffrey Hangst from Aarhus University stated that the antihydrogen atoms can be trapped for 1000 seconds, which is long enough to start making observations even though the number of atoms trapped is less.
According to the paper, around 300 trapped antiatoms were observed. The confinement of antiatoms will ensure accurate mapping of antihydrogen using microwave spectroscopy or laser. This mapping allows the comparison of antihydrogen with hydrogen atoms and any difference should be visible under close examination.
The ALPHA team can make accurate measurements to examine a symmetry known as CPT by confining antihydrogen for long durations. The antiatoms have time to settle into their ground state when confined for such long periods. In physics, symmetries explain how processes are viewed under specific transformations. For example, when the electric charges of particles involved in the process swap between them it is termed C, viewing in the mirror is termed P and reversing the time arrow is termed T.
According to CPT symmetry a particle in our universe traveling forward should be similar to an antiparticle traveling backwards in a mirror universe and it is understood that this principle is ideally followed by nature. Also it is required that antihydrogen and hydrogen have identical graph spectra.
The next move for ALPHA is to start making measurements on trapped antihydrogen. Firstly, the trapped anti-atoms are lit up using microwaves to find out if they absorb identical energies or frequencies in comparison to their matter cousins.