Beatriz Gato-Rivera - Antimatter: What It Is and Why Its Important in Physics and Everyday Life

Cover image: Annihilation of an antiproton against an atom of gas neon. Experiment PS-179 in the LEAR machine at CERN, 1984. CERN

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This book is a substantially extended and updated version of the Spanish book Antimateria, published in October 2018 by the Editorial CSIC/Los Libros de la Catarata. That book was, in turn, a natural extension of several outreach talks I gave in the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), in Madrid, on the subject of antimatter, from 2015 until 2017.

The present English version contains additional chapters due to the extensive enlargement of the existing material that led to its rearrangement. One chapter is however written completely anew. It describes the main features of antimatter, dark matter and dark energy, contrasting them with each other, in order to provide a global view of the exotic side of the Universe. I decided to add that chapter to shed some light on these topics since they seem to create some confusion. In fact, antimatter is often confused with dark matter, which, in turn, is also confused with dark energy.

First of all, I am deeply indebted to my colleague and husband Bert Schellekens (Nikhef, Amsterdam) for his continuous support, reading every single line of the manuscript and helping drawing many of the illustrations. His thoughtful comments have contributed to substantial improvements in the redaction of this book.

I am also really grateful to many colleagues for sharing with me very useful information. From cosmologists Emilio Elizalde (ICE-CSIC, Barcelona) and Pilar Ruiz Lapuente (IFF-CSIC, Madrid), I have learned very interesting facts about the early history of Cosmology and the acceleration of the Universe, respectively. From cosmic-ray experts, Manuel Aguilar (CIEMAT, Madrid) and Fernando Arqueros (UCM, Madrid), I got updates and advice about the AMS experiment, on board the International Space Station, and about the Pierre Auger Observatory, respectively. Stefan Ulmer (RIKEN, Ulmer Fundamental Symmetries Laboratory, Japan) provided the last updates on the antimatter experiments conducted at CERN. I have also benefit very much from scientific discussions with particle physicists Sergio Pastor Carpi and Juan Jos Hernndez (IFIC-CSIC, Valencia) who in addition helped me finding data and references on various issues. I wish to thank Alexander Dolgov (Novosibirsk State University and University of Ferrara), for detailed information on the current state of the research about antimatter structures in the Universe, and Horst Breuker (CERN) for a guided visit to CERNs Antimatter Factory in September 2018. I also acknowledge Jan Willem van Holten and Robert Fleischer (Nikhef, Amsterdam) for some useful information about cosmic rays and B meson systems, respectively, and Pierre Sikivie (University of Florida) for some remarks on axion detection.

I really appreciate the help and kindness of Angela Lahee and Christian Caron, from Springer, who from the very beginning supported this project. I also would like to thank the Spanish Editorial CSIC and Los Libros de la Catarata for allowing me to use the Spanish book Antimateria as basis to elaborate the present book, which is a very much extended and updated version of the former. In this respect, I am also indebted to Alberto Casas (IFT-CSIC, Madrid) and Fernando Barbero (IEM-CSIC, Madrid) for their many comments to the manuscript of that book.

Finally, I am very grateful to the National Institute of Subatomic Physics (Nikhef, Amsterdam), in The Netherlands, where part of this book was written, for hospitality.