GRASIAN: shaping and characterization of the cold hydrogen and deuterium beams for the forthcoming first demonstration of gravitational quantum states of atoms

Carina Killian; Philipp Blumer; Paolo Crivelli; Otto Hanski; Daniel Kloppenburg; François Nez; Valery Nesvizhevsky; Serge Reynaud; Katharina Schreiner; Martin Simon; Sergey Vasiliev; Eberhard Widmann; Pauline Yzombard

doi:10.1140/epjd/s10053-024-00916-5

2024 Impact factor 1.5

Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics

Precision Physics of Simple Atomic Systems – 2024

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. D (2024) 78: 132
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-024-00916-5

Regular Article - Atomic Physics

GRASIAN: shaping and characterization of the cold hydrogen and deuterium beams for the forthcoming first demonstration of gravitational quantum states of atoms

Carina Killian¹^a, Philipp Blumer², Paolo Crivelli², Otto Hanski³, Daniel Kloppenburg¹, François Nez⁴, Valery Nesvizhevsky⁵, Serge Reynaud⁴, Katharina Schreiner²^,4^,5^,6, Martin Simon¹, Sergey Vasiliev³, Eberhard Widmann¹ and Pauline Yzombard⁴

¹ Stefan Meyer Institute for Subatomic Physics, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Dominikanerbastei 16, 1010, Vienna, Austria
² Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland
⁴ Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, ENS-PSL Université, Collège de France, 75252, Paris, France
⁵ Institut Max von Laue - Paul Langevin, 71 avenue des Martyrs, 38042, Grenoble, France
⁶ University of Vienna, Vienna Doctoral School in Physics, Universitätsring 1, 1010, Vienna, Austria

^a Carina.Killian@oeaw.ac.at

Received: 22 July 2024
Accepted: 16 September 2024
Published online: 29 October 2024

Abstract

A low energy particle confined by a horizontal reflective surface and gravity settles in gravitationally bound quantum states. These gravitational quantum states (GQS) were so far only observed with neutrons. However, the existence of GQS is predicted also for atoms. The GRASIAN collaboration pursues the first observation of GQS of atoms, using a cryogenic hydrogen beam. This endeavor is motivated by the higher densities, which can be expected from hydrogen compared to neutrons, the easier access, the fact that GQS were never observed with atoms and the accessibility to hypothetical short-range interactions. In addition to enabling gravitational quantum spectroscopy, such a cryogenic hydrogen beam with very low vertical velocity components—a few cm $s^{-} 1$ $\hbox {s}^-1$ , can be used for precision optical and microwave spectroscopy. In this article, we report on our methods developed to reduce background and to detect atoms with a low horizontal velocity, which are needed for such an experiment. Our recent measurement results on the collimation of the hydrogen beam to 2 mm, the reduction of background and improvement of signal-to-noise and finally our first detection of atoms with velocities $< 72 ms^{-} 1$ $<{72}\,\hbox {ms}{^-1}$ are presented. Furthermore, we show calculations, estimating the feasibility of the planned experiment and simulations which confirm that we can select vertical velocity components in the order of cm $s^{-} 1$ $\hbox {s}^-1$ .

© The Author(s) 2024

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