What Exactly is Antimatter (Gravitationally Speaking)?

There has been renewed interest in the idea of antigravity -- that matter and antimatter repel gravitationally - in lieu of the recent beautiful ALPHA-g result for the free-fall acceleration of antihydrogen of $a_{\bar{H}}=(0.75\pm 0.13~({\rm stat.+syst.})\pm 0.16~({\rm simulation}))g$. Precision tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) have shown that binding energy (atomic, nuclear, and nucleonic) acts like matter under gravity. Whereas the contribution of atomic binding energy to the mass of antihydrogen is negligible, the majority of the mass of the antiproton comes from the gluonic binding energy. Hence, in terms of antigravity, the antiproton is mostly composed of matter and so even if the antimatter content of the antiproton is repelled by the Earth, there would still be a net attraction of the antihydrogen to the Earth because of its dominant matter content. Using recent Lattice QCD results showing that around two-thirds of the mass of the proton (and, hence, from the $CPT$ Invariance of QCD, of the antiproton) is due to gluons, I find that in the antigravity scenario the free-fall acceleration of antihydrogen would be $a_{\bar{H}}=(0.33^{+0.10}_{-0.06})g$. The fact that antinucleons are more matter than antimatter (in the gravitational sense) leads to quite different cosmological consequences than the naive antigravity scenario (where antistars are wholly antimatter). For example, it follows naturally that there is a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe right from the instant of the Big Bang -- but not a baryon-antibaryon asymmetry. Again, this stems simply from the fact that antibaryons are more matter than antimatter.

[1]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Observation of the effect of gravity on the motion of antimatter , 2023, Nature.

[2]  Bo Liu,et al.  Measurement of the J/$\psi $ photoproduction cross section over the full near-threshold kinematic region , 2023, 2304.03845.

[3]  C. Lämmerzahl,et al.  Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Tested with Lunar Laser Ranging. , 2022, Physical review letters.

[4]  K. Cichy,et al.  Generalized parton distributions from lattice QCD with asymmetric momentum transfer: Unpolarized quarks , 2022, Physical Review D.

[5]  A. Metz,et al.  Understanding the proton mass in QCD , 2022, SciPost Physics Proceedings.

[6]  L. Pentchev,et al.  Determining the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton , 2022, Nature.

[7]  A. Metz,et al.  Energy-momentum tensor in QCD: nucleon mass decomposition and mechanical equilibrium , 2021, Journal of High Energy Physics.

[8]  P. Shanahan,et al.  Gluon gravitational structure of hadrons of different spin , 2021, Physical Review D.

[9]  P. von Ballmoos,et al.  Constraints on the antistar fraction in the Solar System neighborhood from the 10-year Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray source catalog , 2021, 2103.10073.

[10]  X. Ji Proton mass decomposition: Naturalness and interpretations , 2021, Frontiers of Physics.

[11]  D. Kharzeev Mass radius of the proton , 2021, Physical Review D.

[12]  P. Sun,et al.  Demonstration of the hadron mass origin from the QCD trace anomaly , 2021, Physical Review D.

[13]  U. Jentschura Antimatter Gravity: Second Quantization and Lagrangian Formalism , 2020, Physics.

[14]  S. Eriksson,et al.  Testing Fundamental Physics in Antihydrogen Experiments , 2020, 2002.09348.

[15]  D. Hajdukovic Antimatter gravity and the Universe , 2019, Modern Physics Letters A.

[16]  W. Detmold,et al.  Gluon gravitational form factors of the nucleon and the pion from lattice QCD , 2018, Physical Review D.

[17]  Jian Liang,et al.  Proton Mass Decomposition from the QCD Energy Momentum Tensor. , 2018, Physical review letters.

[18]  G. Manfredi,et al.  Gravity, antimatter and the Dirac-Milne universe , 2018, Hyperfine Interactions.

[19]  D. Blas Theoretical aspects of antimatter and gravity , 2018, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[20]  P. Zuccon Latest results from the AMS experiment on the International Space Station , 2015 .

[21]  D. Lincoln The Origins of Mass , 2014 .

[22]  M. Villata On the nature of dark energy: the lattice Universe , 2013, 1302.3515.

[23]  J. Gundlach,et al.  Torsion-balance tests of the weak equivalence principle , 2012, 1207.2442.

[24]  M. Villata Reply to “Comment to a paper of M. Villata on antigravity” , 2011, 1109.1201.

[25]  D. J. Cross Response to "CPT symmetry and antimatter gravity in general relativity" , 2011, 1108.5117.

[26]  M. Villata CPT symmetry and antimatter gravity in general relativity , 2011, 1103.4937.

[27]  M. Jankowiak,et al.  Experimental constraints on the free fall acceleration of antimatter , 2009, 0907.4110.

[28]  J. Lykken,et al.  Direct observation limits on antimatter gravitation , 2008, 0808.3929.

[29]  G. Chardin Motivations for antigravity in General Relativity , 1997 .

[30]  M. Kowitt Gravitational repulsion and Dirac antimatter , 1996 .

[31]  X. Ji,et al.  QCD analysis of the mass structure of the nucleon. , 1994, Physical review letters.

[32]  M. Nieto,et al.  The arguments against ``antigravity'' and the gravitational acceleration of antimatter , 1991 .

[33]  L. Schiff Sign of the Gravitational Mass of a Positron , 1958 .

[34]  P. Morrison Approximate Nature of Physical Symmetries , 1958 .

[35]  H. Bondi Negative Mass in General Relativity , 1957 .

[36]  ARTHUR SCHUSTER,et al.  Potential Matter.—A Holiday Dream , 1898, Nature.

[37]  for the STAR collaboration , 2002 .

[38]  L. Schiff GRAVITATIONAL PROPERTIES OF ANTIMATTER. , 1959, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[39]  F. Dyson,et al.  A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919 , 1920 .