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Quantum interference measurement of the free fall of anti-hydrogen

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Abstract

We analyze a quantum measurement designed to improve the accuracy for the free-fall acceleration of anti-hydrogen in the GBAR experiment. Including the effect of photo-detachment recoil in the analysis and developing a full quantum analysis of anti-matter wave propagation, we show that the accuracy is improved by approximately three orders of magnitude with respect to the classical timing technique planned for the current experiment.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: All the relevant data are presented in the paper and there are no further data which could be provided.]

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Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues in the GBAR collaboration https://gbar.web.cern.ch/ for insightful discussions, in particular P.P. Blumer, C. Christen, P.-P. Crépin, P. Crivelli, P. Debu, A. Douillet, N. Garroum, L. Hilico, P. Indelicato, G. Janka, J.-P. Karr, L. Liszkay, B. Mansoulié, V.V. Nesvizhevsky, F. Nez, N. Paul, P. Pérez, C. Regenfus, F. Schmidt-Kaler, A.Yu. Voronin, S. Wolf. This work was supported by the Programme National GRAM of CNRS/INSU with INP and IN2P3 co-funded by CNES and by Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, Photoplus Project No. ANR-21-CE30-0047-01.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, ENS-PSL, Collège de France, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France

    Olivier Rousselle, Pierre Cladé, Saïda Guellati-Khélifa, Romain Guérout & Serge Reynaud

  2. Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 292 Rue Saint Martin, 75003, Paris, France

    Saïda Guellati-Khélifa

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  1. Olivier Rousselle
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  2. Pierre Cladé
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  3. Saïda Guellati-Khélifa
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  4. Romain Guérout
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  5. Serge Reynaud
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the proposition and interpretation of results, and to the redaction of the paper. O. R. conducted the numerical simulations.

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Correspondence to Pierre Cladé.

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Rousselle, O., Cladé, P., Guellati-Khélifa, S. et al. Quantum interference measurement of the free fall of anti-hydrogen. Eur. Phys. J. D 76, 209 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-022-00526-z

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