Smartphone Camera Sensors Revolutionize Antimatter Research

The AEgIS collaboration, led by the Technical University of Munich, has repurposed smartphone camera sensors to create a detector capable of imaging antiproton annihilations in real time with unprecedented 0.6-micrometer resolution – a 35-fold improvement. This breakthrough, using 60 integrated camera sensors for a total of 3840 megapixels, surpasses previous methods relying on photographic plates. Human analysis of the images, despite its time-consuming nature, proved crucial for achieving this accuracy. This technology opens new avenues for studying low-energy antiparticle annihilation and the gravitational effects on antihydrogen.