Café&Kosmos

CafeKosmos The Matter-Antimatter Trap

When matter meets antimatter, they annihilate each other within fractions of a second. In the process, the entire mass is converted into energy. However, this annihilation process can be delayed if the particle density is extremely low and the temperature is very high. Such hot and thin matter-antimatter mixtures probably occur in the universe in the bright plasma disks of young galaxies. But what are their properties?

Plasma physicist Dr. Eve Stenson and her group at IPP are well on their way to producing a matter-antimatter plasma in the laboratory and studying it. She has also done some of her experiments with positrons at FRM II.

At this Café & Kosmos evening, she will talk about how she lures matter and antimatter into magnetic traps to get to the bottom of the properties of plasma, the most common state of matter in the universe.