Direct observation of the hyperfine transition of ground-state positronium

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Jun 22;108(25):253401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.253401. Epub 2012 Jun 20.

Abstract

We report the first direct measurement of the hyperfine transition of the ground state positronium. The hyperfine structure between ortho-positronium and para-positronium is about 203 GHz. We develop a new optical system to accumulate about 10 kW power using a gyrotron, a mode converter, and a Fabry-Pérot cavity. The hyperfine transition has been observed with a significance of 5.4 standard deviations. The transition probability is measured to be A = 3.1(-1.2)(+1.6) × 10(-8) s(-1) for the first time, which is in good agreement with the theoretical value of 3.37 × 10(-8) s(-1).