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In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers at the ALPHA experiment at CERN’s Antimatter Factory report a new technique that allows them to produce over 15 000 antihydrogen atoms – the simplest form of atomic antimatter – in a matter of hours.
“These numbers would have been considered science fiction 10 years ago,” said Jeffrey Hangst, spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment. “With larger numbers of antihydrogen atoms now more readily available, we can investigate atomic antimatter in greater detail and at a faster pace than before.”
To create atomic antihydrogen (a positron orbiting an antiproton), the ALPHA collaboration must produce and trap clouds of antiprotons and positrons separately, then cool them down and merge them so that antihydrogen atoms can form. This process has been refined and steadily improved over many years. But now, using a pioneering technique to cool the positrons, the ALPHA team has increased the rate of production of antihydrogen atoms eightfold.
This spectacular advance in the production rate is all down to how the positrons are prepared. First, the positrons are collected from a radioactive form of sodium and contained in what is known as a Penning trap, where fine-tuned electromagnetic fields hold the antiparticles in place. However, they do not remain still. Like a tiger in a zoo, the positrons circle their cage, causing them to lose energy. This cools the cloud of positrons, but not enough for them to efficiently merge with the antiprotons to form antihydrogen atoms. So, the ALPHA team recently tried a new approach, which was to add a cloud of laser-cooled beryllium ions to the trap so that the positrons would lose energy in a process called sympathetic cooling.
This got the positron cloud down to a temperature of around -266 °C, making it much more likely to form antihydrogen atoms when mixed with the antiprotons. This approach allowed over 15 000 antihydrogen atoms to be accumulated in under seven hours. To put this into perspective, it took a previous experiment 10 weeks to accumulate the 16 000 antihydrogen atoms required to measure the spectral structure of antihydrogen with unprecedented precision. “The new technique is a real game-changer when it comes to investigating systematic uncertainties in our measurements. We can now accumulate antihydrogen overnight and measure a spectral line the following day”, said Niels Madsen, deputy spokesperson for ALPHA and leader of the positron-cooling project.
Using this approach for cooling positrons, the ALPHA experiment produced over 2 million antihydrogen atoms over the course of the experimental runs of 2023–24. And this year, the researchers are making use of the unprecedented numbers of antihydrogen atoms to study the effect of gravity on antimatter as part of the ALPHA-g experiment. This technique will allow even more precise measurements to be made and make it possible to probe deeper into the properties and behaviour of atomic antimatter.
roryalex Tue, 11/18/2025 - 17:07 Byline Rory Harris Publication Date Tue, 11/18/2025 - 17:10CERN research scientist Barbara Latacz was awarded the 2025 Boeing Quantum Creators Prize on 4 November 2025, during the annual Chicago Quantum Summit. The Boeing Quantum Creators Prize recognises early-career researchers for work that moves the field of quantum information science and engineering in new directions and aims to increase diversity in the field.
Barbara Latacz has been a member of the BASE collaboration since 2020, developing new quantum-limited technologies to measure the antiproton magnetic moment. Prior to joining BASE, she completed her PhD in 2019 within the GBAR collaboration, where her research focused on antihydrogen production.
“This is a great honour that the work of BASE was recognised by the broad quantum-technology community,” declared Barbara Latacz. “Now, we plan to use the nuclear-spin qubit to improve the uncertainty in the value of the antiproton magnetic moment by up to a factor of 100, which will be a major step towards our better understanding of fundamental physics.”
For more information about BASE and Latacz’s work, read this article published in July 2025.
2025, International Year of Quantum Science and Technology
The United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), marking 100 years since the initial development of quantum mechanics. At CERN, the Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI) began in 2018 and is now in its second phase. More recently, CERN opened its doors to the Open Quantum Institute (OQI), a multilateral platform incubated by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) that brings together stakeholders from academia, industry, diplomacy and education. The OQI promotes inclusive access to quantum computing and the advancement of its applications for the benefit of society.
CERN hosted a number of quantum-themed events throughout 2025 which you can watch (or rewatch) online, including Sparks! 2025 – Imagining Quantum City.
anschaef Wed, 11/12/2025 - 11:15 Byline Anaïs Schaeffer Publication Date Thu, 11/13/2025 - 11:08
During the September 2025 CMS week, the CMS collaboration announced the winners of the 2024 CMS PhD Thesis Award. After a rigorous evaluation of a remarkable pool of 19 nominees, the collaboration honoured Congqiao Li (Peking University, CN), Christina Wenlu Wang (California Institute of Technology (Caltech), US) and Ho Fung Tsoi (University of Wisconsin–Madison, US) for their exceptional work.
This award celebrates the brightest young minds in high-energy physics within the collaboration, recognising doctoral theses that demonstrate unparalleled creativity and scientific excellence and have a significant impact on the CMS experiment and the broader field.
“Graduate students are the bloodstream of our collaboration. They push the envelope of what is achievable at the LHC in ever-changing and inventive ways. […]. The annual CMS Thesis Award recognises exceptional efforts made by the award winners and highlights their research.” – Greg Landsberg, chair of the CMS PhD Thesis Award Committee
Read more about the 2024 CMS PhD Thesis Award winners on the CMS website.
2025 Young Researcher Prize winnersThat same week, the CMS collaboration also announced the 2025 Young Researcher Prize winners: Cécile Caillol, Elisabetta Manca, Mario Masciovecchio and Jennifer Ngadiuba.
This award recognises the contributions of truly exceptional young researchers to the CMS experiment. It is a moment to celebrate their dedication, innovation and significant impact on the field of particle physics. By honouring these talented individuals, the collaboration aims to inspire future generations of scientists to push the boundaries of knowledge.
Read more about the 2025 Young Researcher Prize winners on the CMS website.
anschaef Wed, 10/29/2025 - 14:42 Byline CMS collaboration Publication Date Thu, 10/30/2025 - 08:37
In March 2024, the CERN Research Board gave the go-ahead for the BDF project, a beam dump installation acting as a high-intensity fixed target. Supplied with proton beams by the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), the BDF will be located in the North Area and is scheduled to begin operation in 2031.
The BDF target will be 1.5 metres thick and will be capable of absorbing all the energy of the SPS beam, making it more like a beam dump than a traditional fixed target. Among the cascades of particles it will produce, scientists hope to discover some from the “hidden sector” – particles that interact so weakly with ordinary matter that they have not been detected yet.
Far more sophisticated than the existing targets, the BDF will be surrounded by a shield of around 1 350 tonnes (180 m3) of cast iron and 1 000 tonnes (400 m3) of concrete and marble.
Which brings us to your blocks of cast iron*.
1 350 tonnes of cast iron, calculated by cost per cubic metre, means a cost of over 4 MCHF. “The team in charge of the project therefore immediately came up with the idea of recycling CERN’s old blocks of cast iron, in particular those of the PS neutrino project TT7, which have remained buried and unused since the 1980s,” explains François Butin, who is responsible for supplying the shielding for the BDF. “We’re talking about 750 tonnes of cast iron – that’s 263 blocks, totalling a volume of 100 m3.”
But they still needed to be recovered, and extracting blocks of cast iron, each weighing up to 7.5 tonnes and buried around 10 metres underground, is no mean feat. “These blocks were located below the hill that runs along Route Oppenheimer. To reach them, we first had to demolish the hill, then start excavating,” Butin continues. Having established their location, the technicians dug all the way around them to create a retaining wall before beginning the extraction of the 263 blocks they were hoping to find. “The work was long and arduous, and not without surprises... of the 750 tonnes of cast iron we had expected to find, we eventually recovered 600, saving us a total of 2.1 MCHF! As for the missing 150 tonnes – for now, they remain an unsolved mystery...”
A total of 143 blocks from the original shielding of the PS TT7 neutrino experiment, each weighing between 1 and 7.5 tonnes, were extracted from the pit in which they had lain for more than forty years. (Image: CERN)
Other unused shielding blocks made of cast iron and concrete will also be collected elsewhere at CERN, including from the TCC2 area of the North Area. In total, it should be possible to recover 1 100 tonnes of cast iron and 850 tonnes of concrete. All in all, an excellent recycling operation!
*We’re joking really, but this is CERN after all – so if you do have any blocks of cast iron or concrete to recycle, don’t hesitate to contact us...
anschaef Tue, 10/14/2025 - 13:12 Byline Anaïs Schaeffer Publication Date Thu, 10/16/2025 - 08:06About a billion pairs of particles collide every second within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). With them, a petabyte of collision data floods the detectors and pours through highly selective filters, known as trigger systems. Less than 0.001% of the data survives the process and reaches the CERN Data Centre, to be copied onto long-term tape. This archive now represents the largest scientific data set ever assembled. Yet, there may be more science in it than we can extract today, which makes data preservation essential for future physicists.
The last supernova explosion observed in the Milky Way dates back to 9 October 1604. How much more could we learn if, alongside the notes made by German astronomer Johannes Kepler at the time, we could see what he saw with our own eyes? Our ability to extract information from laboratory data relies on current computational capabilities, analysis techniques and theoretical frameworks. New findings may lie waiting, buried in some database, and the potential for future discoveries hinges on preserving the results we gather today.
For data to stand the test of time, it must be archived, duplicated, safeguarded and translated into modern formats before we lose the expertise and technology to read and interpret it. As outlined in the recent “Best-practice recommendations for data preservation and open science in high-energy physics” issued by the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), preservation efforts require planning and clear policy guidelines, as well as a stable flow of resources and continued scientific supervision. The Data Preservation in High-Energy Physics (DPHEP) group, established in 2014 under the auspices of ICFA and with strong support from CERN, estimates that devoting less than 1% of a facility’s construction budget to data preservation could increase the scientific output by more than 10%.
In the latest issue of the CERN Courier, Cristinel Diaconu and Ulrich Schwickerath recall some of the most remarkable treasures unearthed from past experiments – such as the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), whose data remains relevant for future electron–positron colliders twenty-five years on, and HERA, which still informs studies of the strong interaction almost two decades after its shutdown.
Diaconu and Schwickerath advocate a joint commitment to international cooperation and open data as the way to maximise the benefits of fundamental research, in compliance with the FAIR principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability. With the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade on the horizon, data preservation will play an important role in making the most of its massive data stream.
Read the full article “Hidden treasures” in the latest edition of the CERN Courier.
roryalex Wed, 09/24/2025 - 15:29 Byline Davide De Biasio Publication Date Thu, 09/25/2025 - 12:00Michele Arneodo, professor of physics at the University of Piemonte Orientale and Chair elect of the CMS Collaboration Board, passed away on 12 August 2025 at the age of 65.
Born in Turin in 1959, Michele graduated with a degree in physics from the University of Turin in 1982. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, where he received his MA in 1985 and his PhD in 1992. After beginning his career as a staff researcher at INFN Torino, he entered academia, becoming associate professor at the University of Calabria. In 1995, he moved to the University of Piemonte Orientale in Novara, where he became full professor in 2002.
Michele’s research career began with the European Muon Collaboration (NA2 and NA9) and the New Muon Collaboration (NA37) at CERN, investigating nucleon structure through the deep inelastic scattering of muons. He went on to play a leading role in the diffractive physics programme of the ZEUS experiment at DESY’s HERA collider, coordinating groups in Turin and Novara and overseeing the operation of the Leading Proton Spectrometer. After being awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, he worked at DESY between 1996 and 1999.
As the LHC era began, Michele devoted his efforts to CMS, becoming a central figure in diffractive physics and a relentless force behind the construction of the CMS Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS) and the subsequent merging of the TOTEM and CMS collaborations. He was convener of the diffractive physics group, served on the CMS Publication and Style Committees, and chaired the Institution Board of the CMS PPS from 2014, where he was also resource manager and INFN national coordinator. He had been appointed Chair of the CMS Collaboration Board, and would have taken up the role later this year.
Teaching was a central part of Michele’s vocation. At the University of Piemonte Orientale he developed courses on radiation physics for medical students and radiology specialists, building bridges between particle physics and medical applications. He was widely recognised as a dedicated mentor, who was always attentive to the careers of younger collaborators.
We will remember Michele as an exceptionally talented physicist and a genuinely kind person, with a style and generosity of a bygone era. Always approachable, he was known for his smile, his sincere interest in others’ well-being, and his delicate sense of humour that lightened professional exchanges. His students and collaborators valued his constant encouragement and his passion for transmitting enthusiasm for physics and science.
While leaving a lasting mark on physics and the institutions he served, Michele also cultivated enduring friendships and dedicated himself fully to his family, to whom the thoughts of CMS and the wider CERN community go at this difficult time. He will rest forever in our hearts.
His Turin colleagues
ehatters Fri, 08/29/2025 - 11:09 Publication Date Fri, 08/29/2025 - 10:57Might two bent crystals pave the way to finding new physics? The Standard Model of particle physics describes our world at its smallest scales exceptionally well. However, it leaves some important questions unanswered, such as the imbalance between matter and antimatter, the existence of dark matter and other mysteries. One method to find “new physics” beyond the Standard Model is to measure the properties of different particles as precisely as possible and then compare measurement with theory. If the two don't agree, it might hint at new physics and let us slowly piece together a fuller picture of our Universe – like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
An example of particles that physicists wish to study more closely are “charm baryons” such as the “Lambda-c-plus” (Λc+) which is a heavier “cousin” of the proton, consisting of three quarks: one up, one down and one charm. These particles decay after less than a trillionth of a second (10-13 s), which makes any measurement of their properties a race against time. Some of their properties have not yet been measured to high precision, leaving room for new physics to hide. The particles’ magnetic and electric dipole moments are of particular interest. In the past, precise measurements of dipole moments in other particles have provided key tests of established theories and, sometimes, uncovered surprises that pointed to new physics.
A novel experimental concept aims to measure the properties of charm baryons using a fixed target and two bent crystals. Electric and magnetic dipole moments can be measured by forcing particles on a curved trajectory. Since charm baryons decay extremely quickly, however, conventional techniques using magnetic fields are not strong enough to obtain measurable results. An alternative approach could be to exploit the fact that the atoms inside a crystal are neatly organised as a three-dimensional lattice, forming tiny channels when viewed from certain directions. If a bent crystal is placed inside a stream of charged particles, the particles may follow these channels, experiencing deflections otherwise out of reach within such a short distance. Thus, this makes measurements on extremely short-lived particles possible.
In the full set-up, one bent silicon crystal is inserted close to the proton beam inside a stream of particles called the “secondary halo” – protons that strayed too far from the beam centre and would normally be absorbed by the LHC collimation system. This first crystal steers the particles away from the main LHC beam towards a tungsten target where the collisions produce charm baryons. A second silicon crystal then bends the path of the produced particles strongly enough that their dipole moments can be precisely measured with a specialised detector.
TWOCRYST was conceived as a proof-of-principle experiment, designed to test whether the concept really works in practice – from the performance of the crystals to the precision of their alignment. After only two years of preparation, TWOCRYST was installed in the LHC at the beginning of the year. “The experimental set-up is a simplified version of a full-fledged experiment, consisting of two bent silicon crystals, a target and two 2D detectors (a pixel tracker and a fibre tracker),” explains TWOCRYST study leader Pascal Hermes. “One goal is to verify if the particles can be deflected through both crystals in sequence – the so-called ‘double channelling’.”
Schematics of the TWOCRYST experimental set-up during the first measurements on 21 and 22 June 2025. The first crystal was placed at the edge of the main LHC beam at injection energy (450 GeV) and the target was omitted. Beam particles were deflected by the first crystal onto the surface of the second crystal, where some of them were deflected a second time (“double channelling”). On the right, the data recorded by the two detectors shows two distinct spots corresponding to single- and double-channelled particles. (Image: João Vítor dos Santos on behalf of the TWOCRYST collaboration)The first TWOCRYST measurements in June at an energy of 450 GeV showed promising results. All the newly installed hardware is functional and operational and, after both silicon crystals had been carefully aligned, “double-channelled” particles were observed for the first time at the LHC and at the highest energy ever achieved. The team will now complete a set of further tests at higher energies of several TeV. All the measurements will be analysed in detail to determine whether enough deflected charm baryons could be collected to justify a full-scale experiment. Whatever the outcome, TWOCRYST has already opened a new chapter of crystal applications at the LHC. The results from TWOCRYST may well shape the design of future fixed-target experiments and novel beam-control concepts at the LHC and beyond.
Members of the TWOCRYST collaboration at the CERN Control Centre after the first measurements (Photo: CERN) Insa Meinke Thu, 08/28/2025 - 14:42 Byline Insa Meinke Publication Date Fri, 08/29/2025 - 10:29
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