Optical Deceleration and Magnetic Trapping of Atomic Hydrogen

Precision spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen allows for the determination of fundamental constants and provides tests of bound-state quantum electrodynamics. The leading sources of uncertainty in hydrogen beam experiments can usually be traced back to velocity-dependent effects. To address these challenges, we will describe a method to load atoms from a cryogenic hydrogen beam into a magnetic trap which is itself at room temperature. This technique will rely on the optical dipole force provided by an accelerating optical lattice. After loading, we aim to perform spectroscopy at velocities roughly an order of magnitude lower than the mean velocity of the atomic beam.