PSILOGO

Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP)


LTP Colloquium

Detection of antihydrogen atoms in the ATHENA experiment with a cold Si-mu-strip and pure-CsI detector

Friday, April 26, 2002, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium

Ch. Regenfus, Univ. Zürich/CERN

Abstract:
The ATHENA experiment [1] at the low energy antiproton facility at CERN (AD) is designed for testing fundamental physic principles (CPT, Gravitation) to a very high degree of precision by comparing cold antihydrogen to hydrogen. To monitor the production, as well as the spectroscopic response of antihydrogen atoms, a detector dedicated for the end products of anti-hydrogen annihilations was developed. To meet the requirements of low temperature operation (77 K) in a high magnetic field (4T), compact size, low power consumption and high granularity, a combination of two layers of each 16 double sided Si-mu-strip detectors (16 cm long) was chosen, surrounded by 192 pure-CsI-crystals, read out by UV sensitive photo diodes [2]. The front end electronics (@ 77 K), realised in CMOS ASIC, features a self triggering capability of the independent sub detectors.
After a general review of the ATHENA apparatus, design, construction and lab tests of the detector will be presented, as well as recent results from the experiment.

  1. M. Holzscheiter et al. (the ATHENA collaboration): Antihydrogen production and precision experiments. Cern Doc. SPSLC 96-47/P 302, 1996. http://athena.web.cern.ch/athena/
  2. C. Amsler at al.: Temperature dependence of pure CsI: acc. for publication in NIM A, 2001.