Studies of Charged Particle Dynamics for Antihydrogen Synthesis

Synthesis and capture of antihydrogen in controlled laboratory conditions will enable precise studies of neutral antimatter. The work presented deals with some of the physics pertinent to manipulating charged antiparticles in order to create neutral antimatter, and may be applicable to other scenarios of plasma confinement and charged particle interaction. The topics covered include the electrostatic confinement of a reflecting ion beam and the transverse confinement of an ion beam in a purely electrostatic configuration; the charge sign effect on the Coulomb logarithm for a two component (e.g., antihydrogen) plasma in a Penning trap as well as the collisional scattering for binary Coulomb interactions that are cut off at a distance different than the Debye length; and the formation of magnetobound positronium and protonium.