Confinement of antihydrogen for 1000 seconds
  Atoms made of a particle and an antiparticle are unstable, usually surviving less than a microsecond. Antihydrogen, made entirely of antiparticles, is believed to be stable, and it is this longevity that holds the promise of precision studies of matter-antimatter symmetry. We have recently demonstrated trapping of antihydrogen atoms by releasing them after a confinement time of 172 ms. A critical question for future studies is: how long can anti-atoms be trapped? Here we report the observation of anti-atom confinement for 1000 s, extending our earlier results by nearly four orders of magnitude. Our calculations indicate that most of the trapped anti-atoms reach the ground state. Further, we report the first measurement of the energy distribution of trapped antihydrogen which, coupled with detailed comparisons with simulations, provides a key tool for the systematic investigation of trapping dynamics. These advances open up a range of experimental possibilities, including precision studies of CPT symmetry and cooling to temperatures where gravitational effects could become apparent. 
ALPHA Collaboration: G.B. Andresen (1), M.D. Ashkezari (2), M.   Baquero-Ruiz (3), W. Bertsche (4), E. Butler (5), C.L. Cesa...
physics.atom-ph hep-ex hep-ph nucl-ex physics.plasm-ph