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

SOME EXAMPLES -- REPRESENTATIVE NORMAL MATTER STORAGE-RELATED EXPERIMENT

FINISHED PRODUCT EXPERIMENTS

Form condensed phase hydrogen
- Test nucleation phenomenology, etc.
Form in two states
- Exactly neutral
- Some charge excess
- Measure properties of condensed state
Levitate in condensed state (diamagnetic)
Levitate in condensed state
- DC electrostatic servo
- G-force tolerances
Lifetime of condensed levitated state
- 1 to 10 mg amounts
- Vapor pressure, specific heats, vs. enclosure temperature
- Vacuum level
Removing constituents from condensed state
- Removal process options
- Nature of constituents
- Nature of remnant
Removal from levitated condensed state
- Removal should be non-destructive of levitated mass
- Nature of constituents, remnants
- Controllability of materials
- Losses, efficiencies vs. removal process
Storage of spin-polarized atomic H
- Leakage, 3-body recombination
- Storage densities, lifetimes

PROCESS EXPERIMENTS (FORM FINISHED PRODUCT)

Enhanced H₂ formation: controlled recombination atomic to molecular para state
Laser, variable magnetic field cooling of H atoms, molecules
Slowing, trapping, cooling (atoms, molecules)
- Include crossed laser resonance radiation schemes
P, e^- formation of H; enhancement schemes
- Optimizing conditions for recombination, etc.
Establish input parameters for final slowing, trapping, cooling
- Set required production process exit conditions
Establish nucleation conditions
- Starting from hydrogen gas
Attempt partial/complete process runs without contacting material walls
Successive stages:
- P, e^- formation of hydrogen
- Control, slowdown, cool hydrogen beam
- Trap, further cooling
- Dense, cold gas
- Produce aggregated state (nucleation, etc.)
- Verify properties of aggregated state
- Transfer to compact storage
- Levitate
- Measure lifetimes, losses, efficiencies
- Controlled removal of material from levitated state
- Manipulation of material (removed material, remnants)
- Guage transferability of experiments to , ₂ case
Define necessary antihydrogen experiments
Etc.

The next two charts [shown above] discuss just a sample of some compact storagenormal matter experiments. These experiments consider two classes ofinitial conditions.

Finished product experiments: prepare a condensed phase ofhydrogen, e.g., a hydrogen solid, in any convenient fashion andthen extract some of this solid and introduce it byconventional manipulation techniques into a cryogenic enclosurewhere it is levitated in one of several basic ways. In itslevitated state certain measurements are performed, and variousways of controlled manipulation of pieces of the solid areexperimented with.
Forming a condensed hydrogen phase ab initio (i.e., fromprotons and electrons) without contacting material walls andwith noncontacting manipulation means (thus giving a Prototypescheme for forming and manipulating antihydrogen ³ Theseclasses of experiments would normally be much too complicatedto contemplate unless one had in mind the ultimate extension toantihydrogen. Again, each step of this attempted process canbe defined in more detail. E.g, there are several occasionswhere heat must be removed. Possible implementations ofcontrolled heat removal have been proposed, but clearly needexperimental trials.

The main point to emphasize again is that it seems possible todefine, plan and conduct experiments to remove or alleviateuncertainties in the practicality of implementing suitable storageschemes. In the process of performing such experiments, research pathsof interest to basic research groups are almost limitless.

³There have very recently been performed some relevant experiments:"Stopping Atoms with Laser Light," Prodan et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. 54,992. 11 March l985; and "Laser Manipulation of Atomic Beam Velocities:Demonstration of Stopped Atoms and Velocity Reversal," Ertmer et al.,Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 996, 11 March l985. See also "Magnetic Trappingand cooling of Atomic Hydrogen," Hess, to appear.