Concepts, Problems, & Opportunities

DONE/PLANNED WITH ANTIMATTER (CERN; OTHERS)	SOME OF THE ANTIMATTER BASIC KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR APPLICATIONS ASSESSMENTS	DONE/DOABLE WITH NORMAL MATTER

	1. generation (antideuterons also observed)
	2. collection; accumulator design
	3. cooling, deceleration stages
	4. cooling, decelarion to subrelativistic velocities
	5. , e⁺ conversion to
	6. very cold, very slow beams
	7. Production of antimatter exotic atoms
	8. Storage: in storage rings (~10 MeV) in small electromagnetic traps (few eV to few KeV)
	9. Manipulation into, out of storage (process losses, etc.)
	10. Annihilation phenomenology at low kinetic energies (including in heavy/fissile elements)

(some proposals exist)	11. Guiding, stopping, trapping of antihydrogen	Crucial Initial
	12. Conversion to condensed states	Experiments
	13. Long term storage of condensed states	Performable with
	14. Extraction, manipulation of constituents	Normal Matter
	15. Storage of spin polarized forms
	16. Storage in special sites in normal matter
	17. Test of specialized accumulator and storage designs
	18. Test of variant cooling schemes

If we take a snapshot of where we are in important aspects of usingantimatter, some form of this chart results. For many proposed uses ofantimatter, further critical experiments are clearly relevant (those,for example, below the horizontal dotted line).

The important point to observe is that in essentially allcircumstances these critical further antimatter experiments can be firstperformed with normal matter (the few specific exceptions are easilyidentified).

Two conclusions result:

A great deal of the critical experimental work, particularly instorage, can be done in conventional laboratory settings, andneed not initially require access to the very few facilitiesnow capable of producing, e.g., antiprotons.
This critical experimental work spans present disciplines suchas atomic and molecular physics, condensed matter physics, thephysics and chemistry of solid state, etc. Many currentexperimental techniques are directly applicable.

Our position is that this critical experimental work, which isidentified in further detail on slide 14 et seq.,is so rich with interest and so wide-spread in the areas it intersects that researchersoutside existing defense research (as well as those in it) should findit stimulating and an opportunity for creative invention.

The fact that normal matter versions of many critical relevantantimatter experiments exist implies that a very broad cross-section ofthe physics community has applicable experience which lends itself toconcerted work, with the expectation then of relatively promptresolution of certain crucial antimatter questions: namely, areasonably confident perspective of basic feasibility issues in a 5-yearperiod.

CURRENT STATUS - ANTIMATTER BASIC PHYSICS, ENGINEERING