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Moving antimatter beyond the lab: BASE-STEP opens a new frontier for precision physics

For decades, antimatter experiments have been bound to a single place: the laboratory in which the particles are produced and trapped. At CERN’s Antimatter Factory, antiprotons are routinely produced, decelerated and confined in Penning traps,…

β-detected NMR at ISOLDE for non-destructive studies of buried interfaces: probing lithium dynamics

Spin-polarised probes have been central to nuclear and particle physics since the discovery of parity violation by Chien-Shiung Wu in 1956, who detected asymmetric emission of β-radiation from low-temperature 60Co in a magnetic field. The…

NA62 sharpens the picture of one of nature’s rarest particle decays

The NA62 experiment at CERN has achieved a major milestone in flavour physics with the first observation of one of the rarest particle decays ever measured. The process — the decay of a positively charged kaon into a pion and a neutrino–antineutrino…

PUMA - Antiprotons as a precision probe for the tail of nuclear density

Understanding the nuclear structure of atomic nuclei away from the valley of stability remains one of the central challenges of nuclear physics and astrophysics. In particular, the dilute outer regions of neutron-rich nuclei can exhibit phenomena…

MUonE: A new path to hadronic vacuum polarization and the running of α

Promising results Promising results - A test run for the proposed MUonE experiment took place at CERN in the summer. The image shows a 20 mm thick graphite scattering target (left) and a silicon strip tracking module (right). Credit:…

Sympathetic Cooling Opens a New Era for Antihydrogen at CERN

A major milestone has been reached at CERN’s Antimatter Factory. Using an innovative technique to cool positrons with laser-cooled beryllium ions, the ALPHA collaboration has increased the rate of antihydrogen production by a factor of eight. The…

Quantum Science and Technologies and High-Energy Physics

Trapped ions: A quantum simulator at the University of Innsbruck. Credit: C Lackner/Innsbruck On 27–28 October 2025, CERN hosted the Symposium on Quantum Science and Technologies and High-Energy Physics (HEP), co-organised through the CERN Quantum…

AMBER — En route to measure the proton radius

After months of excitement and almost continuous, frenetic activity since August, AMBER’s vast experimental hall — more than 10 m high and stretching over 60 m from the upstream collimators to the far wall — now feels unusually quiet and solitary.…

Transfer-induced fission at the ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer

How are the heaviest elements in the Universe formed? Looking at the periodic table, we know where the lightest elements come from. Hydrogen and helium were forged in the primordial nucleosynthesis that took place just moments after the Big Bang.…

Marek Gazdzicki: Four Decades at the SPS – and Still Surprised by Strong Interactions

After nearly two decades at the helm of NA61/SHINE, Marek Gazdzicki reflects in this interview on a lifetime at the SPS — from proposing the world’s first two-dimensional scan of nuclear collisions to the unexpected discovery of a large isospin…

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