Cooling and slowing of trapped antiprotons below 100 meV

Abstract

Electron cooling of trapped antiprotons allows their storage at energies 10 million times lower than is available in any antiproton storage ring. More than 60 000 antiprotons with energies from 0 to 3000 eV are stored in an ion trap from a single pulse of 5.9-MeV antiprotons from LEAR. Trapped antiprotons maintain their initial energy distribution over a storage lifetime exceeding 50 h unless allowed to collide with a cold buffer gas of trapped electrons, where- upon they cool dramatically to 1 eV in tens of seconds. The cooled antiprotons can be stacked into a harmonic potential well suited for long-term storage and precision measurements.