Laser spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium

When antiprotons (i.e. the antimatter counterpart of protons) are stopped in helium gas, 97% of them annihilate within picoseconds by reacting with the helium nuclei; a 3% fraction, however, survive with an anomalously long lifetime of several microseconds. This longevity is due to the formation of antiprotonic helium, which is a three-body Rydberg atom composed of an antiproton, electron, and helium nucleus. The ASACUSA experimental collaboration has recently synthesized large numbers of these atoms using CERN´s Antiproton Decelerator facility, and measured the atom´s transition frequencies to 60 parts per billion by laser spectroscopy. By comparing the experimental results with recent three-body QED calculations and the known antiproton cyclotron frequency, we were able to show that the antiproton mass and charge are the same as the corresponding proton values to a precision of 10 parts per billion. Ongoing and future series of experiments will further improve the experimental precision by using chirp-compensated, continuous-wave pulse-amplified dye lasers whose frequencies are locked to a femtosecond optical frequency comb generator.