Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering

The interaction of antiprotons with low-energy positronium atoms is a fundamental three-body problem whose significance is its utility for formation of antihydrogen. Particular importance resides in understanding processes involving excited positronium states. Until recently such studies were perfor...

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Main Authors: Kadyrov, Alisher, Bray, I., Charlton, M., Fabrikant, I.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Macmillan Publishers Limited 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59220
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author Kadyrov, Alisher
Bray, I.
Charlton, M.
Fabrikant, I.
author_facet Kadyrov, Alisher
Bray, I.
Charlton, M.
Fabrikant, I.
author_sort Kadyrov, Alisher
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The interaction of antiprotons with low-energy positronium atoms is a fundamental three-body problem whose significance is its utility for formation of antihydrogen. Particular importance resides in understanding processes involving excited positronium states. Until recently such studies were performed using classical techniques. However, they become inapplicable in the low-energy domain. Here we report the results of comprehensive quantum calculations, which include initial excited positronium states with principal quantum numbers up to n i?=?5. Contrary to expectation from earlier work, there are only muted increases in the cross-sections for antihydrogen formation for n i?>?3. We interpret this in terms of quantum suppression of the reaction at higher angular momenta. Furthermore, the cross-sections for elastic scattering are around two orders of magnitude higher, which we attribute to the degeneracy of the positronium states. We outline some experimental consequences of our results.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:15:28Z
publishDate 2017
publisher Macmillan Publishers Limited
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-592202018-03-16T01:31:29Z Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering Kadyrov, Alisher Bray, I. Charlton, M. Fabrikant, I. The interaction of antiprotons with low-energy positronium atoms is a fundamental three-body problem whose significance is its utility for formation of antihydrogen. Particular importance resides in understanding processes involving excited positronium states. Until recently such studies were performed using classical techniques. However, they become inapplicable in the low-energy domain. Here we report the results of comprehensive quantum calculations, which include initial excited positronium states with principal quantum numbers up to n i?=?5. Contrary to expectation from earlier work, there are only muted increases in the cross-sections for antihydrogen formation for n i?>?3. We interpret this in terms of quantum suppression of the reaction at higher angular momenta. Furthermore, the cross-sections for elastic scattering are around two orders of magnitude higher, which we attribute to the degeneracy of the positronium states. We outline some experimental consequences of our results. 2017 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59220 10.1038/s41467-017-01721-y http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Macmillan Publishers Limited fulltext
spellingShingle Kadyrov, Alisher
Bray, I.
Charlton, M.
Fabrikant, I.
Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title_full Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title_fullStr Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title_full_unstemmed Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title_short Quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
title_sort quantum suppression of antihydrogen formation in positronium-antiproton scattering
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59220