On January 30, Jakob Kastelic successfully defended the thesis, “Search for Time-Reversal-Symmetry Violation in Thallium Fluoride Using a Cryogenic Buffer-Gas Beam Source” (advisor: Steve Lamoreaux/David DeMille).
Kastelic explained, “While the Standard Model of particle physics proved able to describe a huge range of phenomena, it famously does not amount to a “theory of everything”. As a part of the global search for “new physics” beyond the Standard Model, we have been constructing a new experiment using a cold beam of thallium fluoride molecules (CeNTREX). My work, in collaboration with scientists at Yale and other institutions, has been focused on creating the molecular beam and shielding the sensitive experiment from interfering laboratory magnetic fields.”
Kastelic has been working since September 2023 at Stanford Research Systems as an Instrument Design Engineer/Scientist.
Thesis abstract:
The CeNTREX experiment aims to provide a 30-fold increase in sensitivity over the best present upper bounds on the strength of time-violating fundamental interactions by measuring shifts in nuclear resonant frequencies in thallium fluoride. We describe the motivation for studying these time-violating interactions, and provide an overview of past work. We present the current measurement scheme for this experiment. Since the apparatus is still under construction, we present the components already built, with focus on the beam source and magnetic field control.