First Attempts at Antihydrogen Trapping in ALPHA

The ALPHA apparatus is designed to produce and trap antihydrogen atoms. The device comprises a multifunction Penning trap and a superconducting, neutral atom trap having a minimum-B configuration. The atom trap features an octupole magnet for transverse confinement and solenoidal mirror coils for longitudinal confinement. The magnetic trap employs a fast shutdown system to maximize the probability of detecting the annihilation of released antihydrogen. In this article we describe the first attempts to observe antihydrogen trapping.