First demonstration of antimatter wave interferometry

An international collaboration with participation of the University of Bern has demonstrated for the first time in an interference experiment that antimatter particles also behave as waves besides having particle properties. This success paves the way to a new field of investigations of antimatter. Matter waves constitute a crucial feature of quantum mechanics, where particles have wave properties in addition to particle characteristics. This wave-particle duality was postulated already in 1924 by the French physicist Louis de Broglie. The existence of the wave property of matter has been successfully demonstrated in a number of experiments with electrons and neutrons, as well as with more complex matter, up to large molecules. For antimatter the wave-particle duality had also been proven through diffraction experiments. However, researchers of the QUPLAS collaboration now established the wave behavior in a single positron (antiparticle to the electron) interference experiment.