Concepts, Problems, & Opportunities for use of Annihilation Energy:

An Annotated Briefing on Near-Term RDT&E to Assess Feasibility

RAND Note N-2302-AF/RC

B. W. Augenstein

A BRIEF SAMPLE OF SOME BASIC RESEARCH, EXPERIMENT PROGRAMS

Compact Storage-Related	Production-Related
Case: Normal matter experiments Finished product Forming the finished product	Basic investigations Target design Collection System design Intermediate stages Factor conceptual designs Powering issues Total Plant Cost Estimates

Performers for such programs:
- Most can be done in academic, industrial laboratory settings
- Some would be best done at National Labs
- Most critical experiment programs not costly ($ few hundred K to few million)
- Most issues relatable to known experimenter/experiment teams
What such basic research, experiment programs would achieve
- Formulate, do critical studies and experiments
- Perform early demonstrations
- Very substantial upgrading of assessment of antimatter promise
- If promise continues, give design inputs to proto type phase

It is possible to define and formulate perhaps several hundredcritical studies and experiments relevant to antimatter production andcompact storage. The chart introduces a sample of those criticalstudies and experiments.

The issues involved are broad; the majority can be considered byteams outside the FNAL/CERN milieu, so that the experimental team baseencompasses much more than personnel at the major high energy physicscenters.

Rand has considered to some substantial extent where suitableresearchers and research teams could be found, matching identifiedcritical studies and experiment needs. Rapid experimental progress onproblems relevant to antimatter appears possible because so many ofthese problems are first amenable to prototypical normal matterexperiments which do not depart too far from programs already in activeresearch.

We emphasize again the opportunities for fundamental investigationsof antimatter. For example, if one has produced and trappedantihydrogen, measurements of the Lamb shift in antimatter can be done,involving a meticulous coupling of old and new techniques.

All in all, there is a great deal of elegant physics andengineering to be tapped, not only in fundamental investigationsinvolving antimatter, but also, and at least as compelling, in the greatmany normal matter experiments with which one can start off. Forexample:

Develop tunable Lyman-a sources (4 wave mixing in Mercury).
Pi-pulse cooling schemes.
to ₂laser stimulated recombination; use of polarization phenomena.
Spin-polarized - non-contacting traps, limiting 3-body recombination.
Many paths for condensed ₂ - trapping/formation alternative options.