Positron-Positronium Converters in Reflection and Transmission Geometry for Gravitational Experiments with Antihydrogen using Moiré Deflectometry

Abstract

In the context of the Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy (AEgIS) located at CERN, positron- positronium converters with a high positron-positronium conversion efficiency have been designed in both reflection and transmission geometries. The converters utilize nanochanneled silicon target technology with positron conversion efficiencies up to around 50% and around 16%, at room temperature and in the absence of magnetic fields, for reflection and transmission respectively. The positron-positronium converters allow for the pulsed production of antihydrogen (H) within the AEgIS experiment. This paper discusses the use of a pulsed H beam in a moir´e deflectometer to perform a precise gravitational measurement on H at AEgIS. This work describes the principles and technical details of the current design of a moir´e deflectometer using the pulsed H beam. The main goal of this work is to summarize the ongoing project of adding the described moir´e deflectometer to the AEgIS experiment to further their efforts toward probing the material dependence of gravity and testing the weak equivalence principle (WEP).