Our current understanding of the Universe comes, among others, from particle physics and cosmology. In particle physics an almost perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter exists. On ...cosmological scales, however, a striking matter/antimatter imbalance is observed. This contradiction inspires comparisons of the fundamental properties of particles and antiparticles with high precision. Here we report on a measurement of the g-factor of the antiproton with a fractional precision of 0.8 parts per million at 95% confidence level. Our value /2=2.7928465(23) outperforms the previous best measurement by a factor of 6. The result is consistent with our proton g-factor measurement g
/2=2.792847350(9), and therefore agrees with the fundamental charge, parity, time (CPT) invariance of the Standard Model of particle physics. Additionally, our result improves coefficients of the standard model extension which discusses the sensitivity of experiments with respect to CPT violation by up to a factor of 20.
Molecular similarity search is an often-used method in drug discovery, especially in virtual screening studies. While simple one- or two-dimensional similarity metrics can be applied to search ...databases containing billions of molecules in a reasonable amount of time, this is not the case for complex three-dimensional methods. In this work, we trained a transformer model to autoencode tokenized SMILES strings using a custom loss function developed to conserve similarities in latent space. This allows the direct sampling of molecules in the generated latent space based on their Euclidian distance. Reducing the similarity between molecules to their Euclidian distance in latent space allows the model to perform independent of the similarity metric it was trained on. While we test the method here using 2D similarity as proof-of-concept study, the algorithm will enable also high-content screening with time-consuming 3D similarity metrics. We show that the presence of a specific loss function for similarity conservation greatly improved the model’s ability to predict highly similar molecules. When applying the model to a database containing 1.5 billion molecules, our model managed to reduce the relevant search space by 5 orders of magnitude. We also show that our model was able to generalize adequately when trained on a relatively small dataset of representative structures. The herein presented method thereby provides new means of substantially reducing the relevant search space in virtual screening approaches, thus highly increasing their throughput. Additionally, the distance awareness of the model causes the efficiency of this method to be independent of the underlying similarity metric.
Continuous monitoring of a cloud of antiprotons stored in a Penning trap for 405 days enables us to set an improved limit on the directly measured antiproton lifetime. From our measurements we ...extract a storage time of 3.15 × 10 8 equivalent antiproton-seconds, resulting in a lower lifetime limit of τ p ¯ > 10.2 a with a confidence level of 68 % . This result improves the limit on charge-parity-time violation in antiproton decays based on direct observation by a factor of 7.
We report on the detection of individual spin quantum transitions of a single trapped antiproton in a Penning trap. The spin-state determination, which is based on the unambiguous detection of axial ...frequency shifts in presence of a strong magnetic bottle, reaches a fidelity of 92.1%. Spin-state initialization with >99.9% fidelity and an average initialization time of 24 min are demonstrated. This is a major step towards an antiproton magnetic moment measurement with a relative uncertainty on the part-per-billion level.
We study kinetically controlled orientational and structural transitions of molecular thin films during growth in situ and in real time, using diindenoperylene (DIP) as an example. By time-resolved ...surface-sensitive x-ray scattering (out of plane and in plane), we follow the organic molecular beam deposition of DIP on silicon oxide, on stepped sapphire, and on rubrene as an organic model surface. We identify transitions for the few-monolayer (ML) regime, as well as for thick (several 10's of ML) films. We show that the differences in the interaction of DIP with the substrate change the thickness as well as temperature range of the transitions, which include (transient) strain, subtle changes of the orientation, as well as complete reorientation. These effects should be considered rather general features of the growth of organics, which, with its orientational degrees of freedom, is qualitatively different from growth of inorganics.
We present an experiment to sympathetically cool single protons and antiprotons in a Penning trap by resonantly coupling the particles to laser cooled beryllium ions using a common endcap technique. ...Our analysis shows that preparation of (anti)protons at mK temperatures on timescales of tens of seconds is feasible. Successful implementation of the technique will have immediate and significant impact on high-precision comparisons of the fundamental properties of protons and antiprotons. This in turn will provide stringent tests of the fundamental symmetries of the Standard Model.
The BASE collaboration investigates the fundamental properties of protons and antiprotons, such as charge-to-mass ratios and magnetic moments, using advanced cryogenic Penning trap systems. In recent ...years, we performed the most precise measurement of the magnetic moments of both the proton and the antiproton, and conducted the most precise comparison of the proton-to-antiproton charge-to-mass ratio. In addition, we have set the most stringent constraint on directly measured antiproton lifetime, based on a unique reservoir trap technique. Our matter/antimatter comparison experiments provide stringent tests of the fundamental charge-parity-time invariance, which is one of the fundamental symmetries of the standard model of particle physics. This article reviews the recent achievements of BASE and gives an outlook to our physics programme in the ELENA era.
This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Antiproton physics in the ELENA era'.
The Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) aims at performing a stringent test of the combined charge parity and time reversal (CPT) symmetry by comparing the magnetic moments of the proton and ...the antiproton with high precision. Using single particles in a Penning trap, the proton/antiproton
g
-factors, i.e. the magnetic moment in units of the nuclear magneton, are determined by measuring the respective ratio of the spin-precession frequency to the cyclotron frequency. The spin precession frequency is measured by non-destructive detection of spin quantum transitions using the continuous Stern-Gerlach effect, and the cyclotron frequency is determined from the particle*s motional eigenfrequencies in the Penning trap using the invariance theorem. By application of the double Penning-trap method we expect that in our measurements a fractional precision of δ
g
/
g
10
−9
can be achieved. The successful application of this method to the antiproton will consist a factor 1000 improvement in the fractional precision of its magnetic moment. The BASE collaboration has constructed and commissioned a new experiment at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) of CERN. This article describes and summarizes the physical and technical aspects of this new experiment.
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