Antiproton-nucleus annihilation cross section at low energy

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, D-85748 Garching, Germany
² Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Brescia, I-25123 Brescia, Italy
³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, Italy
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
⁵ Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, I-22100 Como, Italy
⁶ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Milano Bicocca, I-20126 Milano, Italy
⁷ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Trieste, I-34127 Trieste, Italy

^a Now at Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, I-22100 Como, Italy and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Milano Bicocca, I-20126 Milano, Italy

Published online: 3 August 2018

Abstract

The antinucleon-nuclei annihilation cross sections at low energies were systematically measured at CERN in the 80’s and 90’s with the LEAR facility and later with the Antiproton Decelerator. Unfortunately only few data exist for very low energy antiprotons (p<500 MeV/c) on medium and heavy nuclei. A deeper knowledge is required by fundamental physics and can have consequence also in cosmology and medical physics. In order to fill the gap, the ASACUSA Collaboration has very recently measured the annihilation cross section of 100 MeV/c antiprotons on carbon. In the present work the experimental result is presented together with a comparison both with the antineutron data on the same target at the same energies and with the other existing antiproton data at higher energies.