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Antimatter gravity measurement
Antimatter gravity measurement pertains to testing whether or not antimatter experiences gravity exactly the same as normal everyday matter present in daily life. A current and prevalent hypothesis, based on Einstein's equivalence principle, states that gravity affects matter and antimatter exactly the same. Yet, there is no direct evidence to support this hypothesis.
Additionally, the hypothesis of dark matter and dark energy means that 95% of the mass of the observable universe cannot currently be detected; and can only be inferred from calculations and observable indirect effects. Therefore, researchers are unable to account for 95% of the universe's gravity. This means that gravitational effects on antimatter are actually unknown. Direct experiments are needed. Recycling atoms and antimatter interferometry using antimatter hydrogen atoms is a proposed solution.[1][2][3][4]
Experiments
ALPHA is studying tapped antihydrogen
ATRAP is developing techniques for cold antihydrogen
AEGIS proposes to diffract antihydrogen
References
Hamilton, P. et al. (2014). "Antimatter Interferometry for Gravity Measurements". Physical Review Letters 112: 121102. arXiv:1308.1079. Bibcode:2014PhRvL.112l1102H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.121102. Lay summary.
Regenfus, C. (26 September 2004). Measurement of antimatter gravity with an (anti) matter wave interferometer (PDF). SPSC Villars Meetings 2004 (CERN). Retrieved 3 April 2014.
Amole, C. et al. (2013). "Description and first application of a new technique to measure the gravitational mass of antihydrogen". Nature Communications 4: 1785. Bibcode:2013NatCo...4E1785A. doi:10.1038/ncomms2787. PMC 3644108. PMID 23653197.
"ALPHA probes antimatter gravity". ALPHA. 14 January 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
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