Formation of antihydrogen atoms and ions in a strongly magnetized plasma: A molecular dynamics simulation

Formation of antihydrogen atoms in a magnetized plasma of positrons and antiprotons is explicitly demonstrated in a molecular dynamics simulation. The parameters chosen are compatible with the experimental setup. We employ a special, adaptive time step symplectic integrator to perform full dynamics simulation, without using the guiding center approximation, for very long times (of the order of μs). The large number of antihydrogen atoms formed allows detailed statistical analysis and distributions for the binding energy, pseudomomentum, sizes, and other quantities that characterize these atoms. We also find that a significantly smaller number of antihydrogen positive ions form during the free expansion of the plasma