Longest Antimatter Containment

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The longest antimatter containment achieved was over 16 minutes by the Alpha project at CERN in 2011. The BASE experiment successfully contained antiprotons for more than a year without detectable annihilation. Containing charged antiprotons is significantly easier than neutral antihydrogen due to the shallower trap potential for antihydrogen, which results in more atoms escaping over time. Annihilation occurs on a timescale of 10,000 to 100,000 seconds, making it a minor factor in the overall containment duration.

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Nabla
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Hello,

From what I read, the longest antimatter containment ever achieved was >16 minutes by the Alpha project at CERN in 2011.

Has this ever been beaten?
What is the limiting factor?...the anti-hydrogen will always have a magnetic moment to be held by the magnetic field of the trap, so is it the fact that it exists in an imperfect (though very strong) vacuum, and eventually annihilates over time?

Haven't been able to find much info on this.

Thanks
 
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BASE kept antiprotons for more than a year, with no detectable annihilation.
Containing charged antiprotons is much easier than containing neutral antihydrogen. The trap potential for antihydrogen is much shallower, so more atoms escape over time.

I didn't see an update. They clearly saw some antihydrogen atoms left after 1000 s, and probably (2.6 sigma significance) some after 2000 s.
The annihilation timescale is estimated to be 10,000 to 100,000 seconds, so annihilation is a small effect.
More details in the paper
 
mfb said:
so annihilation is a small effect.
Unless you are there when it happens
 

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