title: Two-photon laser spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium and the antiproton-to-electron mass ratio.
abstract: Physical laws are believed to be invariant under the combined transformations of charge, parity and time reversal (CPT symmetry). This implies that an antimatter particle has exactly the same mass and absolute value of charge as its particle counterpart. Metastable antiprotonic helium (pHe(+)) is a three-body atom consisting of a normal helium nucleus, an electron in its ground state and an antiproton (p) occupying a Rydberg state with high principal and angular momentum quantum numbers, respectively n and l, such that n ≈ l + 1 ≈ 38. These atoms are amenable to precision laser spectroscopy, the results of which can in principle be used to determine the antiproton-to-electron mass ratio and to constrain the equality between the antiproton and proton charges and masses. Here we report two-photon spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium, in which p(3)He(+) and p(4)He(+) isotopes are irradiated by two counter-propagating laser beams. This excites nonlinear, two-photon transitions of the antiproton of the type (n, l) → (n - 2, l - 2) at deep-ultraviolet wavelengths (λ = 139.8, 193.0 and 197.0 nm), which partly cancel the Doppler broadening of the laser resonance caused by the thermal motion of the atoms. The resulting narrow spectral lines allowed us to measure three transition frequencies with fractional precisions of 2.3-5 parts in 10(9). By comparing the results with three-body quantum electrodynamics calculations, we derived an antiproton-to-electron mass ratio of 1,836.1526736(23), where the parenthetical error represents one standard deviation. This agrees with the proton-to-electron value known to a similar precision.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, D85748 Garching, Germany. masaki.hori@mpq.mpg.de
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hori
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sótér
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barna
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dax
authors.forename: Ryugo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hayano
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Friedreich
authors.forename: Bertalan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Juhász
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pask
authors.forename: Eberhard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Widmann
authors.forename: Dezso
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Horváth
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Venturelli
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zurlo