Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In modern physics, antimatter is defined as a material composed of the antiparticles

(or "partners") of the corresponding particles of ordinary matter. Microscopic numbers of
antiparticles are generated daily at particle accelerators and in natural processes like
cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of
these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form anti-atoms. No
macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and
difficulty of production and handling.

In theory, a particle and its anti-particle (for example, proton and antiproton) have the
same mass, but opposite electric charge and other differences in quantum numbers. For
example, a proton has positive charge while an antiproton has negative charge.

A collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual
annihilation, giving rise to various proportions of intense photons (gamma rays),
neutrinos, and sometimes less-massive particle-antiparticle pairs. Annihilation usually
results in a release of energy that becomes available for heat or work. The amount of the
released energy is usually proportional to the total mass of the collided matter and
antimatter, in accordance with the mass–energy equivalence equation, E=mc2.

Antimatter particles bind with one another to form antimatter, just as ordinary particles
bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron) and
an antiproton (the antiparticle of the proton) can form an antihydrogen atom. The nuclei
of antihelium have been artificially produced with difficulty, and these are the most
complex anti-nuclei so far observed. Physical principles indicate that complex antimatter
atomic nuclei are possible, as well as anti-atoms corresponding to the known chemical
elements.

There is strong evidence that the observable universe is composed almost entirely of
ordinary matter, as opposed to an equal mixture of matter and antimatter. This asymmetry

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in
physics. The process by which this inequality between matter and antimatter particles
developed is called baryogenesis.

Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle

collisions take place. High-energy cosmic rays impacting Earth's atmosphere (or any
other matter in the Solar System) produce minute quantities of antiparticles in the
resulting particle jets, which are immediately annihilated by contact with nearby matter.
They may similarly be produced in regions like the center of the Milky Way and other
galaxies, where very energetic celestial events occur (principally the interaction
of relativistic jets with the interstellar medium). The presence of the resulting antimatter
is detectable by the two gamma rays produced every time positrons annihilate with
nearby matter.

Fig 1.1: Solar system and interstellar features of intense interest for fume
scientific unmanned space missions

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Gerald P. Jackson [1] describes the ultimate goal of this project is to identify and
investigate an exploration architecture that would allow a light-weight instrument
package to he sent to another stellar system. Due to the difficulty inherent in an
interstellar mission, we have examined an architecture for a less demanding mission;
sending a probe to the Kuipe Belt in a transit time of 10 years, Sometime around 20 years
in the future, humanity will want to send unmanned scientific spacecraft outside of the
solar system to the hydrogen wall at the interface between the heliosphere and interstellar
medium.

Alireza Narimannezhad [2] explains fabrication of long-aspect ratio microtubes

presented for an antimatter trap. Conventionally, non-neutral antimatter is stored using a
Penning-Malmberg trap, a single tube with aspect ratios being of the order of less than
10:1. Parallel microtubes with aspect ratios of 1000:1 have the potential to store many
orders of magnitude more. The silicon industry has paved the way to
microelectromechanical systems technologies which have been utilised in this research.
Standard processes such as photolithography, deep reactive ion etching, sputtering and
thermo compression bonding were all used; however, unique methods of these processes
were developed to overcome many engineering challenges and realise successful
trapping. This project will open the door to a wide range of new and exciting research
areas. Studying the systems of multiple matter antimatter particles such as positronium,
di-positronium and antihydrogen will be feasible. The size of these traps along with the
low confining potentials is a big step to making them portable. This advanced technology
could be used as a source of energy or in propulsion systems where alternative sources
are not feasible.

Dr. William Herbert Sims III [3] This paper has two domains, first is to incorporate
existing RF technologies used exclusively in the communication regime into magnetic
trap applications. This is accomplished by combining current RF methodologies with new

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

and innovative techniques to increase the overall storage capabilities. Long term storage
systems are a key enabling technology for a range of antimatter applications,including,
potentially, space propulsion applications. Second is to develop new design and
fabrication techniques for the basic handling and manipulation of antiprotons. This is
accomplished by proper transmission of RF power throughout the antimatter trap system.
In this work, innovative and unique methods are developed and shown to overcome
limitations of current state-of-the-art electromagnetic containment and manipulation of
antimatter clouds. These methods include creation of new types of RF antennas that are
capable of propagating an RF/microwave signal within the ion cloud. This unique
subsystem was designed and developed using current Penning-Malmberg trap topologies
as a model with significant modifications to allow the accurate transmission/reception of
the RF signal.

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

Missions to deep space will require specific impulses greater than 6000 seconds in
order to accomplish the mission within the career lifetime of an individual. Only two
technologies available to mankind offer such performance; fusion and antimatter. Fusion
has proven unattainable despite forty years of research and billion of dollars. Antimatter,
alternatively, reacts with uranium 98% of the time in a well-described manner. However,
development of a suitable propulsion system based on antimatter has not been shown
until now. Our system analysis indicates that a IO kg instrument payload could bc sent to
250 AU in 10 years using 30 milligrams of antihydrogen. In addition, preliminary
calculations also show that 17 grams of antihydrogen could send a similar probe to the
next star, Alpha Centauri, in 40 years. We have designed a very straightforward system
that will produce a variable specific impulse with a maximum of near one million
seconds. The concept is one that can he throttled, that can be steered, and that cam he
demonstrated within the next two years. In this paper we identify the components of the
system architecture that will be needed to perform a mission to the Kuiper Belt.

Sometime around 20 years in the future, humanity will want to send unmanned scientific
spacecraft outside of the solar system to the hydrogen wall at the interface between the
heliosphere and interstellar medium. At approximately the same distance from the sun are
the gravitation lens focal point of the sun and the low-density Kuiper comet belt.
Approximately IO-IOOx further out is the Oort cloud, and yet another 10-1OOx further
away is our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, that is 4.3 light-years away.

SPACECRAFT OVERVIEW:

There are four basic sections of the spacecraft, with the 10 kg instrumentation package at
the rear, either attached rigidly to the body of the spacecraft or towed via tether a few
kilometers behind and away from the pion and neutron flux from annihilations and
fissions occurring at the sail in the front of the spacecraft.

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

The basic nuclear physics behind this concept is the fact that antimatter incident on the
surface of an uranium foil has a 98% probability of inducing a fission event.

Fig 3.1 Proposed antimatter driven spacecraft. The primary subsystems are (1) a uranium
coated carbon sail, (2) solid H2bar crystal storage units, (3) an antiproton driven
electrical power supply, and (4) a 10 kg instrument package.

In undergoing fission it is found that two fragments of approximately palladium-1

I1 are emitted back-to-hack with a total energy of approximately 190MeV. The velocity
of the fission products is 1.39~10~ m/s and the mass is 1.85~10’~ kg/atom. This velocity
would equate to a specific impulse of 1.4 million seconds. In addition, there are
numerous penetrating particles emitted such as high energy neutrons, gamma rays, and
pions. Imagine a cloud of antihydrogen drifting onto a thin uranium foil. On average, half
of the fission fragments will have trajectories outside of the foil. These fragments do
nothing other than carry away kinetic energy and reduce the overall energy efficiency of
the concept. On the other hand, the other fission fragment enters the foil ,. and is stopped
via dE/dx. Because the incoming fission fragment can have any angle within 2n
steradians, the forward momentum transfer is on average half of the per- .fragment
momentum. To stop a fission fragment propagating normal to the foil surface, the surface
would have to be approximately 5.5 microns thick. In principle ‘any material can be used
as a backing layer to the uranium foil to provide this stopping power. Note that toward

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

the end of life of the foil, its thickness will he much reduced and a .high-strength, high
melting point material is desired. We have chosen carbon for these reasons (fig. 3). A
minimum thickness of 15 microns is required for dE/dx. One possible enhancement
might he to accelerate the incident antiprotons toward the uranium surface such that the
stopping range of the antiprotons is well within the surface. It has been hypothesized that
an annihilation event below the surface may create a cloud of ejecta which would
increase the momentum transfer into the sail. An antiproton kinetic energy of 100 keV,
easily created by electrostatically biasing the sail with respect to the antihydrogen
container, would stop the antiprotons approximately 355 nm below the surface. The
disadvantage of this concept is that more of the uranium in the sail is consumed, forcing
the thickness for a mission to the Kuiper belt of 293 microns. Assuming a 5 m diameter
sail, this gives the sail a mass of slightly over 100 kg. Though significantly heavier than
the mass of the instrumentation, this is much lower than traditional ideas. The advantage
of this scenario is that it reduces the specific impulse of the drive, increasing the energy
efficiency of the concept and reducing the number of antiprotons required. The
experimental characterization of this mass ejecta effect, if existent, is the focus of the
next phase of the experimental development effort for this technology.

The number of antiprotons required for this mission is roughly 2x10^22, space
charge forces prevent their storage in that form. At a minimum, antihydrogen molecules
must he formed. Because of the vapor pressure of solid hydrogen, very low cryogenic
temperatures must be preserved. The antihydrogen storage system is held 12 m away
from the sail via four tethers. The storage system is envisioned to be an array of small
chips resembling integrated circuit chips. Each chip, however, is not an electronic unit
hut contains a series of tunnels etched in a silicon substrate. Each tunnel is a sequence of
electrodes. Each electrode pair forms a cell that contains a single pellet of solid
antihydrogen. The operational scenario is similar to that of CCD chips, wherein charge is
transported from one well to the next in a bucket-brigade manner. Each pellet holds
approximately IO” antihydrogen atoms and a charge of roughly 10.” coulomhs. Each
tunnel holds 67 cells. There are 100 tunnels per 4 cm long chip. Thus, each chip holds
1.6~10’~ antihydrogen atoms. There are roughly 2000chips in the storage assembly.

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

Total number of antihydrogen atoms is 1.8x102* or 30.45 milligrams. The entire mass of
the storage unit is about 9 kg.

Fig 3.2 Depiction of the effect of annihilations on the sail as a function of incident
antiproton kinetic energy

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 4

APPLICATIONS

1) Medical Field

PET (positron emission tomography) uses positrons to produce high-resolution images of

the body. Positron-emitting radioactive isotopes (like the ones found in bananas) are
attached to chemical substances such as glucose that are used naturally by the body.
These are injected into the bloodstream, where they are naturally broken down, releasing
positrons that meet electrons in the body and annihilate. The annihilations produce

2) Fuel

Isolated and stored anti-matter could be used as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar
travel as part of an antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion or other antimatter
rocketry, such as the redshift rocket. Since the energy density of antimatter is higher than
that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-to-
weight ratio than a conventional spacecraft.

3) Weapons

Antimatter has been considered as a trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons. A major
obstacle is the difficulty of producing antimatter in large enough quantities, and there is no
evidence that it will ever be feasible. However, the U.S. Air Force funded studies of the
physics of antimatter in the Cold War, and began considering its possible use in weapons,
not just as a trigger, but as the explosive itself.

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 5

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

At present the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is capable of producing 10^11

antiprotons per hour for a traditional total of 4450 hours per year. If every antiproton
generated in a year was formed into antihydrogen and stored on board such an
unmanned spacecraft, roughly 4.5*10^11 antihydrogen atoms would be stored. This is
enough to generate 400 W for two seconds, or 1 part in 40 million of the total
antihydrogen inventory. At the present time, enough antiprotons are generated to perform
millisecond type thrust tests. Basically, there are two ways to increase the antiproton
production rate. The first is to put more protons on the antiproton production target. The
limitations to this method are heating of the target and the cost of accelerating
antiprotons. The second way is to increase the efficiency of antiproton production. At
present, the Fermi production efficiency is 15 antiprotons for every million protons on
target. The present method of antiproton capture and cooling is optimized for the
production of low emittance beams for use in colliding particle beam physics. Removing
the resultant longitudinal and transverse emittance limitation imposed by this usage, a
modified accelerator complex that decelerates and captures antiprotons without
intermediate cooling can he readily envisioned.

Fig 5.1: History And Projection of Record Global Antiproton Production Rates

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSIONS

The chief practical difficulties with antimatter rockets are the problems of creating
antimatter and storing it. Creating antimatter requires input of vast amounts of energy, at
least equivalent to the rest energy of the created particle/antiparticle pairs, and typically
(for antiproton production) tens of thousands to millions of times more. Most proposed
antimatter rocket designs require a large amount of antimatter (around 10 grams to reach
Mars in one month).Storage of antimatter is typically done by trapping electrically
charged frozen antihydrogen pellets in Penning or Paul traps. One technical challenge to
making a positron spacecraft a reality is the cost to produce the positrons. Because of its
spectacular effect on normal matter, there is not a lot of antimatter sitting around. In
space, it is created in collisions of high-speed particles called cosmic rays. On Earth, it
has to be created in particle accelerators, immense machines that smash atoms together.
A rough estimate to produce the 10 milligrams of positrons needed for a human Mars
mission is about 250 million dollars using technology that is currently under
development. This cost might seem high, but it has to be considered against the extra cost
to launch a heavier chemical rocket or the cost to fuel and make safe a nuclear reactor.
Based on the experience with nuclear technology, it seems reasonable to expect positron
production cost to go down with more research. Another challenge is storing enough
positrons in a small space. Because they annihilate normal matter, you can't just stuff
them in a bottle. Instead, they have to be contained with electric and magnetic fields. "We
feel confident that with a dedicated research and development program, these challenges
can be overcome. If this is so, perhaps the first humans to reach Mars will arrive in
spaceships powered by the same source that fired star ships across the universes of our
science fiction dreams. Though the antimatter rocket seems to be a very prospective way
of space travelling the reality is somewhat different. According to some experts it is not
possible to use antimatter for the space travel until the next few decades or so.

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 Application of Antimatter In Rocket Propulsion

REFERENCES

[1] Jackson, Gerald P., and Steven D. Howe. "ANTIMATTER DRIVEN SAIL FOR
DEEP SPACE MISSIONS." In Proceedings of the 2003 Particle Accelerator
Conference, vol. 1, pp. 705-707. IEEE, 2003.

[2] Narimannezhad, Alireza, Joshah Jennings, Marc H. Weber, and Kelvin G. Lynn.
"MICROFABRICATION OF A HIGH-DENSITY, NON-NEUTRAL
ANTIMATTER TRAP." Micro & Nano Letters 9, no. 10 (2014): 630-634.

[3] Sims, W. H., and J. Boise Pearson. "RADIO FREQUENCY (RF) TRAP FOR
CONFINEMENT OF ION PLASMAS IN ANTIMATTER PROPULSION
SYSTEMS USING ROTATING WALL ELECTRIC FIELDS." In Proceedings. 2004
NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware, 2004., pp. 334-339. IEEE, 2004.

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