New plasma tools for antimatter science

Summary form only given: Much progress has been made recently to create cold antimatter plasmas and to exploit them for a variety of fundamental scientific studies and technological applications. In particular, single-component plasmas are a unique medium with which to manipulate antimatter without the usual deleterious effect of annihilation with matter. The work described here focuses on the development of new plasma tools for the trapping and manipulation of antimatter plasmas and beams, with immediate applications to positron science. Progress is described in three key areas: radial compression of single-component plasmas using rotating electric fields in a novel, strong-drive regime; experiments and complementary theoretical modeling of the extraction of beams with small transverse spatial extent from single- component plasmas; and work to develop a multicell trap to increase by orders of magnitude the capacity for antiparticle storage. Potential applications of these tools and challenges for future research are discussed.