Probing the interaction of gravity and antimatter and the limits of electromagnetic and nuclear forces at the AEgIS experiment at CERN

The AEgIS (Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) experiment aims to measure the gravity interaction of neutral antimatter. This can be achieved by observing the gravitational fall of an antihydrogen pulsed beam. The production and manipulation of an electrically neutral antimatter beam is a mandatory step to achieve the needed sensitivity. High precision is required to disentangle between different model predictions based on quantum gravity theories, where the gravitational coupling of antimatter could be violating the weak equivalence principle. Moreover, complementary measurements are proposed using the already available infrastructure. Antiprotonic atoms, where one antiproton replaces one electron, are of special interest. The simplest of these systems is the protonium, an atomic bound state between a proton and an antiproton. The excitation energy levels of the protonium directly reflect the contribution from both the electromagnetic and strong forces. Any observed deviation in the energy spectrum from the predictions from quantum chromodynamics and electrodynamics are signatures of new physics beyond the well established standard model of particle physics. Furthermore, other antiprotonic systems could be explored and provide complementary measurements to the gravitational fall of an pulsed beam of antihydrogen.