The AEg̅IS collaboration at CERN’s AD produces antihydrogen atoms in the form of a pulsed, isotropic source with a precisely defined formation time. AEg̅IS has recently undergone major upgrades to fully benefit from the increased number of colder antiprotons provided by the new ELENA decelerator and to move toward forming a horizontal beam to directly investigate the influence of gravity on the H̅ atoms, thereby probing the Weak Equivalence Principle for antimatter. This contribution gives an overview of these upgrades as well as subsequent results from the first beam times with ELENA.

The AEgIS experiment located at the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN aims to measure the gravitational fall of a cold antihydrogen pulsed beam. The precise observation of the antiatoms in the Earth gravitational field requires a controlled production and manipulation of antihydrogen. The neutral antimatter is obtained via a charge exchange reaction between a cold plasma of antiprotons from ELENA decelerator and a pulse of Rydberg positronium atoms. The current custom electronics designed to operate the 5 and 1 T Penning traps are going to be replaced by a control system based on the ARTIQ & Sinara open hardware and software ecosystem. This solution is present in many atomic, molecular and optical physics experiments and devices such as quantum computers. We report the status of the implementation as well as the main features of the new control system.

The primary goal of the AEgIS collaboration at CERN is to measure the gravitational acceleration on neutral antimatter. Positronium (Ps), the bound state of an electron and a positron, is a suitable candidate for a force-sensitive inertial measurement by means of deflectometry/interferometry. In order to conduct such an experiment, the impact position and time of arrival of Ps atoms at the detector must be detected simultaneously. The detection of a low-velocity Ps beam with a spatial resolution of (88 ± 5) μm was previously demonstrated [1]. Based on the methodology employed in [1] and [2], a hybrid imaging/timing detector with increased spatial resolution of about 10 μm was developed. The performance of a prototype was tested with a positron beam. The concept of the detector and first results are presented.

We present a hybrid imaging/timing detector for force sensitive inertial measurements designed for measurements on positronium, the metastable bound state of an electron and a positron, but also suitable for applications involving other low intensity, low energy beams of neutral (antimatter)-atoms, such as antihydrogen. The performance of the prototype detector was evaluated with a tunable low energy positron beam, resulting in a spatial resolution of ≈ 12 µm, a detection efficiency of up to 40 % and a time-resolution in the order of tens of ns.

We describe Urukul, a frequency synthesizer based on direct digital synthesis (DDS), optimized for wave generate control in atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics experiments. The Urukul module is a part of the Sinara family of modular, open-source hardware designed for the ARTIQ quantum operating system. The Urukul has 4-channel, sub-Hz frequency resolution, controlled phase steps and accurate output amplitude control. The module is available in two population variants. This paper presents Urukul module construction and obtained characteristics.