Proposed LHC Experiment Would Spot Invisible, Long-lived Particles

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Category: Research News

Published: Wednesday, August 02 2017 13:30

More than 300 feet underground, looping underneath both France and Switzerland on the outskirts of Geneva, a 16-mile-long ring called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) smashes protons together at nearly the speed of light. Sifting through the wreckage, scientists have made some profound discoveries about the fundamental nature of our universe.

The Large Hadron Collider (Credit: Maximilien Brice/CERN/CC BY-SA 4.0)

But what if all that chaos underground is shrouding subtle hints of new physics? David Curtin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics here at UMD, has an idea for a detector that could be built at the surface—far away from the noise and shrapnel of the main LHC experiments. The project, which he and his collaborators call MATHUSLA, may resolve some of the mysteries that are lingering behind our best theories.

This episode of the Relatively Certain podcast was produced by Chris Cesare, Emily Edwards, Sean Kelley and Kate Delossantos. It features music by Dave Depper, Podington Bear, Broke for Free, Chris Zabriskie and the LHCsound project. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play or Soundcloud.

To listen now, click here and a player will open.

For more on this topic, read this Quanta Magazine article. 

Antonsen Named Distinguished University Professor

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Category: Department News

Published: Thursday, July 27 2017 12:54

Professor Tom Antonsen has been named a University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor. This designation is the campus’ highest academic honor, reserved for those whose scholarly achievements “have brought distinction to the University of Maryland.”  He was cited for fundamental contributions to the related fields of plasma physics, charged particle beam research, and nonlinear dynamics.

Prof. Antonsen, who received his PhD at Cornell University, joined the University of Maryland in 1984 and currently holds appointments in the Department of Physics, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP).  In 2016, he received the John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics “for contributions to the theory of charged particle beam generation and the development of computational design tools for fast and slow wave devices.” He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. 

Distinguished University Professors in the Department of Physics

CMNS Article on Antonsen

Promotions and Appointments Effective July 1, 2017

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Category: Department News

Published: Wednesday, July 26 2017 12:54

Kaustubh Agashe, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, is a particle theorist who was recently named a Fermilab Distinguished Scholar. Dr. Agashe researches mathematical extensions to the Standard Model, making theoretical predictions that can be tested experimentally in settings including the Large Hadron Collider and future accelerator facilities.

Carter Hall, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, researches neutrinos and dark matter. He has worked on the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO-200), and the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector, and is the new spokesperson for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, based in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestead gold mine in South Dakota.

Peter Shawhan, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, works on the LIGO experiment based in Louisiana and in Washington state. In recent years, LIGO made major news by confirming the existence of gravitational waves and thereby validating Einstein’s theory of relativity. Prof. Shawhan is also the Chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Gravitational Physics.

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates Jr. has been appointed a College Park Professor. Gates joined the UMD faculty in 1984, and in the ensuing decades became an internationally-known advocate of science education. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science. He is now the Co-Director of the Presidential Scholars Program at Brown University.

David Clarke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, and his research focuses on the design, analysis, and manipulation of topological phases of matter for applications in quantum information processing.

Cornelius Griggs was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, and works on advancing the techniques of superconducting gravity gradiometry and its applications, such as earlier detection of earthquakes.

Greg Jenkins was promoted to the rank of Associate Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, and studies the magneto-optical studies of Dirac and Weyl semimetals.

Hyunsoo Kim was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Kim received his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, and works in the development and application of very low-temperature instrumentation for the study of the electronic properties of novel materials.

Norbert Linke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Dr. Linke received his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, and at UMD was part of the team that realized the first programmable quantum computer based on five Ytterbium ions.

Atomic cousins team up in early quantum networking node

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Category: Research News

Published: Thursday, July 13 2017 11:17

Large-scale quantum computers, which are an active pursuit of many university labs and tech giants, remain years away. But that hasn’t stopped some scientists from thinking ahead, to a time when quantum computers might be linked together in a network or a single quantum computer might be split up across many interconnected nodes.

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