C2 ANION FLUORESCENCE SPECTROSCOPY WITH IN THE AEGIS EXPERIMENT

The goal of the AEGIS project at CERN is to create ultra-cold antihydrogen in order to perform precise measurements on the direction and magnitude of the gravitational force felt by antimatter. In order to provide the best results it is necessary to create as much antihydrogen as possible. The method of production chosen by AEGIS is a charge exchange process between excited positronium and ultra-cold antiprotons. In order to cool the antiprotons to well below mK temperatures, the AEGIS collaboration is attempting to sympathetically cool the antiprotons using laser cooled C2 anions. Currently we are in the process of conducting experiments on creating and confining a beam of C2 anions. One of these experiments is exciting them with a 2.54micro meter laser and attempting to observe the fluorescence from the C2 anions. This is being done not only to prove that we are creating C2 anions but to also gain a good estimate as to how many we have. The first step to this experiment is to create a model of the fluorescence system and calculate the probability of observing the fluorescence. In this paper I will discuss this model and the results.