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Knowing that the overall charge is zero, what mechanisms/technologies are used to capture anti-hydrogen? Where is it stored until annihilation?

I am aware of magnetic traps being used to edge the respective anti particles closer and closer but upon combining, i am lost.

On a (potentially daft) side note, why doesn't an anti-neutron form instead when the anti-particles are combined via some strange 'anti electron capture'?

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  • $\begingroup$ yes but that's just for charged particles, is it not? $\endgroup$
    – Phizzy
    Commented Oct 20, 2014 at 23:39
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    $\begingroup$ An anti-neutron can't form, because the mass of a neutron is higher than the mass of a proton by about 1.3MeV. An electron mass is only 511keV, so one has to add the energy difference kinematically, which can be done by electron capture in a nucleus or in an accelerator experiment with sufficiently fast electrons. A low energy positron/anti-proton reaction can only lead to an anti-hydrogen. Trapping anti-hydrogen is indeed a tough experimental task. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented Oct 21, 2014 at 0:53

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The trapping technology used by the ALPHA group at CERN is described in this article, and specifically the trapping of the neutral anti-hydrogen is described here.

The trapping is done by an Ioffe trap - I couldn't find a simple article describing how this works, but the search I've linked finds lots of related articles that are worth reading. In brief, the trapping takes advantage of the magnetic dipole moment of the anti-hydrogen atom and traps it in an octupole field.

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