BASE wins accolades from Chicago Quantum Summit and Institute of Physics
The BASE collaboration at CERN, along with research scientist Barbara Latacz who is a member of the collaboration, have both been awarded top prizes recently.
Latacz was awarded the 2025 Boeing Quantum Creators Prize during the annual Chicago Quantum Summit. The Boeing Quantum Creators Prize recognises early-career researchers for work that moves the field of quantum information science and engineering in new directions and aims to increase diversity in the field.
Barbara Latacz has been a member of the BASE collaboration since 2020, developing new quantum-limited technologies to measure the antiproton magnetic moment. Prior to joining BASE, she completed her PhD in 2019 within the GBAR collaboration, where her research focused on antihydrogen production.
“This is a great honour that the work of BASE was recognised by the broad quantum-technology community,” declared Barbara. “Now, we plan to use the nuclear-spin qubit to improve the uncertainty in the value of the antiproton magnetic moment by up to a factor of 100, which will be a major step towards our better understanding of fundamental physics.”
The Institute of Physics has also announced that the research carried out by the BASE collaboration is one if its Top 10 breakthroughs of the Year for 2025 for being the first to perform coherent spin spectroscopy on a single antiproton – the antimatter counterpart of the proton. The breakthrough is the most precise measurement yet of the antiproton’s magnetic properties and could be used to test the Standard Model of particle physics.
The experiment begins with the creation of high-energy antiprotons in an accelerator. These must be cooled (slowed down) to cryogenic temperatures without being lost to annihilation. Then, a single antiproton is held in an ultracold electromagnetic trap, where microwave pulses manipulate its spin state. The resulting resonance peak was 16 times narrower than previous measurements, enabling a significant leap in precision.
This level of quantum control opens the door to highly sensitive comparisons of the properties of matter (protons) and antimatter (antiprotons). Unexpected differences could point to new physics beyond the Standard Model and may also reveal why there is much more matter than antimatter in the visible universe.
This article is based on original articles on the CERN website and Physics World