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Anti-hydrogen origin revealed by collision simulation (Vol. 47 No. 2)

Numerical model takes us one step closer to understanding anti-hydrogen formation, to explain the prevalence of matter and antimatter in the universe

Anti-hydrogen is a particular kind of atom, made up of the antiparticle of an electron—a positron—and the antiparticle of a proton—an antiproton. Scientists hope that studying the formation of anti-hydrogen will ultimately help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. In a new study published recently, the authors demonstrate that the two different numerical calculation approaches they developed specifically to study collisions are in accordance. As such, their numerical approach could therefore be used to explain antihydrogen formation. The authors employed two very different calculations —using a method dubbed coherent close-coupling — for both one- and two-centre collisions respectively in positron scattering on hydrogen and helium. Interestingly, they obtained independently convergent results for both approaches. Such convergence matters, as it is a way to ascertain the accuracy of their calculations for anti-hydrogen formation.

I. Bray, J. J. Bailey, D. V. Fursa, A. S. Kadyrov and R. Utamuratov, Internal consistency in the close-coupling approach to positron collisions with atoms, Eur. Phys. J. D 70, 6 (2016)
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