ETH Zurich PSI Team Develops Cold Muonium Beam for Equivalence Principle Test
A new cold-muonium production technique at PSI opens the first experimental window on whether second-generation particles obey the equivalence principle. Success would either confirm or falsify a core assumption of general relativity across fermion generations. The approach leverages superfluid helium to overcome the muon's short lifetime and thermal spread.
Next steps require integrating the muonium source with an atom interferometer or vertical free-fall apparatus inside a vibration-isolated vacuum chamber, targeting sensitivity to acceleration differences at the 10^-10 g level. Funding and engineering timelines point to a first data run within three to five years if background magnetic shielding reaches design specifications.
Soter group: First statistically significant muonium free-fall measurement will be published by 2029 with acceleration agreement to within 1 percent of g.
Sources (2)
- [1]Primary Source(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02579-0)
- [2]Supporting Source(https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12345)