Two-photon spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium

The precision of laser spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium (a helium atom with one of its electrons replaced by an antiproton) has improved by almost 4 orders of magnitude over its 20 years of history. Experimental transition frequencies can be compared to 3-body QED calculations to derive the antiproton-electron mass ratio. In the latest measurements of the Asacusa experiment at CERN, two-photon transitions of antiprotonic helium were excited using two counter-propagating laser beams. This method reduces the Doppler-broadening caused by the thermal motion of the atoms, and allowed us to measure the transition frequencies with a fractional precision of 2.5–5 parts in 109. From these frequencies, we derived an antiproton-electron mass ratio of 1836.1526736(23). Our precision approaches that of the experimental value of the proton-electron mass ratio, and agrees with the latter within errors. Assuming CPT symmetry (i.e. \(m_{p}=m_{\overline {p}}\)), we further derived the electron’s atomic mass as m e = 0.0005485799091(7)u from the more accurately known atomic mass of the proton.