LAUSR

Abstract The prime candidate for fueling relativistic starships is antimatter and reaching the stars will require antimatter storage on board of a spacecraft in a compact form, most likely liquid or solid antihydrogen. The problem is how to store antimatter in a container made of conventional matter. The solution is an energy barrier on the inner surface of the tank wall preventing antimatter from contacting the wall. Diamagnetic antihydrogen can be kept apart of conventional matter, if a gradient magnetic barrier is created near the inner surface of a tank. In this article, various magnetic barriers induced by arrays of current-carrying superconductive loops are studied by numerical simulations such as mosaics of rectangular loops, arrays of concentric circular loops (top and bottom of a cylindrical container), arrays of identical circular loops that form the cylinder element of the container, and arrays of loops distributed over sphere. The force acting on liquid and solid antihydrogen and the maximum height of antihydrogen ‘fuel’ in a tank are calculated. The problems and challenges caused by antihydrogen vapors are discussed.