About me

I'm an experimental particle physicist specializing in neutrino physics, nuclear physics, and detector technology.

My main research interest is understanding how low-energy neutrinos interact with nuclei. These interactions are crucial for studying neutrinos emitted from various sources, such as supernovae, the sun, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decays within the Earth. This research not only sheds light on the elusive nature of neutrinos but also has implications for our broader understanding of particle physics and the universe in which we live.

I currently work at Virginia Tech, where I am developing passive detectors to search for neutrinos and dark matter in naturally occurring minerals. Prior to this position, I was part of the nEXO experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, searching for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136Xe with unprecedented sensitivity to help determine the matter-antimatter asymmetry of our universe.

I earned my Ph.D. from Duke University working on the COHERENT experiment and the Advanced Neutron Calibration Facility (ANCF). My work on COHERENT led to the world's first observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, a process predicted by the Standard Model that had escaped detection for more than 40 years. As part of ANCF, I helped characterize neutrino and dark matter detectors for low-energy nuclear recoils using the Tandem Van de Graaff generator at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory.

This website is based off vcard-personal-portfolio.

Resume

Education

  1. Duke University

    2015 — 2021
    Doctor of Philosophy, Physics

    At Duke, I was part of the COHERENT experiment under the guidance of Phil Barbeau. The title of my thesis was "Low Energy Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions at the Spallation Neutron Source." See the "Research" section of this site for more details.

  2. California State University, Long Beach

    2012 — 2015
    Master of Science, Physics

    At CSULB, I worked in Dr. Jiyeong Gu's group. The title of my thesis was "“Odd-Triplet Superconductivity in Exchange-Spring Based Nb/Py/SmCo/Py/Nb Josephson Junctions.” I was a TA for introductory physics and astronomy labs, and GA for graduate courses PHYS560: Mathematical Methods for Physicists and PHYS562: Computational Physics.

  3. University of Puget Sound

    2007 — 2011
    Bachelor of Science, Physics
    Minor in Computer Science

    At the University of Puget Sound, I studied music, physics, and computer science. I was a TA for an introductory undergraduate physics laboratory.

Other Research Experience

  1. Postdoctoral Researcher, nEXO Experiment

    2021 — 2024
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

    At LLNL, I worked to build the Large Xenon Test Stand (LXTS) for commissioning runs, with the ultimate goal of testing high-voltage for the nEXO experiment using nEXO's hardware. Developed P&ID, recovery system, slow-controls,and alternate sealing and cooling systems. Simulated electron-neutrino charged-current interactions in nEXO to study its sensitivity to nearby supernovae.

  2. Intern, COHERENT experiment

    2016
    Sandia National Laboratories

    As an intern at Sandia National Laboratory, I resurrected the MARS neutron spectrometer for deployment to ORNL. Developed DAQ, ran initial gamma and neutron calibrations, and did some early work on energy calibration code for MARS.

  3. Student Independent Research Intern (SIRI)

    2014 — 2015
    NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

    As an intern at JPL, I developed automation tools, operation guide, and visualization programs for data analyzed with Spextool; I analyzed spectroscopic data related to the 2009 Jupiter Impact Event.

  4. Student Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI)

    2012
    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

    At LBNL, I utilized Monte-Carlo program FLUKA to model the response of the BRAN luminosity monitor to proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at LHC energies with updated detector geometry. I added heavy-ion collisions (Pb-Pb, p-Pb) to existing simulations using heavy-ion event generator DPMJET, running large-scale simulations at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC).

My skills

  • Python
  • ROOT
  • MCNP
  • C++
  • CAD (Inventor/Onshape)
  • GEANT4
  • FLUKA
  • VHDL


Awards

  1. LLNL Research Slam Finalist

    2024

  2. Springer Thesis Award

    2024

  3. Consortium for Enabling Non-Proliferation Capabilities (CNEC) Fellowship

    2016-2020

  4. Goshaw Family Fellowship (Duke University)

    2015-2016, 2020

  5. Graduate Dean's List (CSULB)

    2015

  6. Summer Student Research Assistantship (CSULB)

    2014,2015

  7. Dean's List (University of Puget Sound)

    2010

Research

  • Neutrinos are produced across an incredibly wide range of energies in our universe! By detecting these neutrinos, we can learn about the processes that generated them, including information unavailable through other channels. My research focuses on neutrino interactions at energies < 100 MeV, which includes a number of interesting sources. This includes nuclear fusion inside the run, radioactive decay of elements in the Earth's crust, fissions occuring inside nuclear reactors, and core-collapse supernovae. Unfortunately neutrino cross sections scale with neutrino energy, so low-energy neutrinos are especially difficult to detect.

    Spectra of Low-Energy Neutrinos

    Plot showing the fluxes of low-energy neutrinos from different sources (all-flavors).



    I'm also interested in developing new detector technology to hunt for neutrinos and dark matter. In some cases, this involves new ideas that use recent technological advances--in others, this involves revisiting older ideas that have been overlooked.

  • Neutrinos at the SNS

    At the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), protons strike a mercury target 60 times per second. When this collision happens, we get neutrinos! These neutrinos are generated from decaying pions and muons that are created in the collisions.

    Production of neutrinos at the SNS

    Cartoon of neutrino production at the SNS.



    COHERENT's detectors are located in "Neutrino Alley", a hallway 20-25m from the SNS target. There are a number of detectors we deploy to the SNS to study neutrino interactions with various nuclei. A more-or-less up to date image can be found below.
    Map of detector in Neutrino Alley, 2024

    Top-down schematic of Neutrino Alley and COHERENT's detectors, circa 2025.




    Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

    Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) can occur when a neutrino scatters off a nucleus as a whole, leading to a large increase in interaction rate. This process was first predicted in 1974, but escaped detection for more than 40 years! The difficulty in measuring CEvNS is that the only signature of the interaction is a low-energy nuclear recoil. Imagine throwing a ping-pong ball at a bowling ball, and trying to measure how much the bowling ball recoils. If we can detect recoils, we can use CEvNS to study all kinds of low-energy neutrino sources, and can also test the our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics!

    Inelastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

    Not all neutrino-nucleus interactions are coherent--these interactions can produce electrons, photons, and other particles. While these inelastic scattering processes are rarer, they are much easier to see with our detectors. There are many proposals to use these processes to study neutrinos from the sun, supernovae, and radioactive decays on Earth, but only a handful of measurements. In some of these measurements, our best theoretical predictions don't agree with the data we see, which tells us our understanding of this process is incomplete!

  • Mineral Detection of Dark Matter

    When a neutrino or a Dark Matter particles interacts with material, it can cause damage to that material. In some materials, this damage can produce "color-centers" which fluoresce under certain colors of light. Using light-sheet microscopy, gram-scale crystals can be imaged in a matter of hours to find what interactions have occurred.

    Some of the materials that produce color-centers are found in nature. These minerals have been sitting underground for hundreds of millions of years, which means they have had many opportunities for dark matter or neutrinos to interact with them.

    Pictures of this will be coming in the future!

  • Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

    Some nuclei are unstable, but cannot immediately decay into a neighboring nucleus on the periodic table. A small set of these nuclei can undergo two simultaneous decays (double-beta decay), emitting two electrons and two neutrinos (two-neutrino beta decay), which we have observed in most of these nuclei.

    If the neutrino is its own antiparticle, it may be possible to the two produced neutrinos to annhilate each other, causing the two emitted electrons to carry away all of the energy. Searches for neutrinoless double beta decay are looking for exactly this. One of the reasons this decay is so special is that matter is produced without corresponding antimatter--all other decays we know produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If we observe this decay, it helps to explain why the universe exists.

    nEXO

    nEXO is seeking for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136Xe using 5-tonnes of enriched liquid xenon. R&D for nEXO is currently ongoing, with the ultimate goal of an underground deployment to carry out the search for neutrinoless double beta decay.

  • ANCF

    At the Advanced Neutron Calibration Facility (ANCF) at Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL), detectors' response to low-energy nuclear recoils is characterized, which is relevant for both CEvNS and WIMP dark-matter scattering.

    Nuclear Recoil Quenching Factors

    More coming soon!

Publications

2024

  • M. Yvaine, et al., "Imaging of single barium atoms in a second matrix site in solid xenon for barium tagging in a 136Xe double beta decay experiment." (2024). arXiv:2407.00285.

  • S. Adamski, et al., "First detection of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on germanium" (2024). arXiv:2406.13806.

  • S. Hedges, et al., "Supernova Electron-Neutrino Interactions with Xenon in the nEXO Detector" (2024). arXiv:2405.19419.

  • A. Anker, et al., "Report from the Workshop on Xenon Detector 0vBB Searches: Steps Towards the Kilotonne Scale." (2024). arXiv:2404.19050.

  • D. Cintas, et al., "A measurement of the sodium and iodine scintillation quenching factors across multiple NaI(Tl) detectors to identify systematics," Phys. Rev. C 110, 014613 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.110.014613. arXiv:2402.12480.

2023

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