Two BASE members have recently received international awards for their contributions to our experiments.
At BASE, we develop and operate advanced Penning-trap systems to study the properties of single antiprotons with world-leading precision. Our goal is to compare matter and antimatter at the most fundamental level and to test the symmetries underlying the Standard Model.
Marcel Leonhardt – Wolfgang Paul Study Award
Marcel Leonhardt, PhD student at the chair for quantum technologies and fundamental symmetries (Prof. Ulmer & Dr. Smorra) of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, has received the Wolfgang Paul Study Award of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (DGMS) for his Master’s thesis.
Within the BASE-STEP project, we developed a mobile Penning trap system that allows trapped particles to be transported without loss. In 2024, we demonstrated the first loss-free transport of trapped protons across the CERN site, an important step toward transporting antimatter between experiments and high-precision laboratories.
Barbara Latacz – Boeing Quantum Creators Award
Barbara Latacz, CERN research scientist and technical coordinator of BASE, has received the Boeing Quantum Creators Award.
She is recognized for demonstrating coherent spin transitions of a single antiproton, establishing quantum-coherent control of antimatter particles, and enabling a new generation of high-precision symmetry tests.
Combining the technologies
Within BASE, we now aim to combine both advances: transportable antimatter traps and coherent quantum control of antiproton spins. Our long-term goal is to transport antiprotons from CERN into dedicated high-precision laboratories, where we can perform even more sensitive comparisons of matter and antimatter and further push the limits of CPT tests.