Wright Lab represented at Snowmass 2022

person giving talk in front of large screen with presentation on it.
July 29, 2022

From July 16-26, 2022 members of the Wright Lab community attended and participated in the Snowmass Community Summer Study Workshop at the at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. At the meeting, the particle physics community came together to identify and document a scientific vision for the future of particle physics.

According to the Snowmass 2022 website, the Seattle meeting was the culmination of the various workshops and Town Hall meetings that have taken place during 2020, 2021, and 2022 as part of Snowmass21, a yearlong study hosted by the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of the American Physical Society (APS), which takes place approximately every ten years. Its purpose is to define the most important questions for the field of particle physics and identify promising opportunities to address them. 

Members of Wright Lab gave talks, convened workshop sessions, were panelists, and presented posters.  A full list is below.

Wright Lab postdoctoral associate Jorge Torres also won the Physics Slam competition at Snowmass.  During the competition, physicists shared entertaining explanations of some of the most exciting issues in physics today.

Conveners and panelists

  • Bonnie Fleming, professor of physics, was a co-convener and panelist for “Birds of a Feather: Townhall: International Benchmarking” (HEPAP subpanel)
  • Karsten Heeger, professor of physics, chair of the Yale Physics Department, and director of Wright Lab served as:
    • a co-convener of a plenary session on “CPAD: Careers and Collaborations in Detector Instrumentation” 
    • a panelist on “Cross frontier sessions: UF-NF-RF Facilities for measurements of 0nbb and neutrinos from natural sources”
    • a panelist on “Path to Resolution through Neutrino Experiments and Beyond”
  • Reina Maruyama, professor of physics and of astronomy, served as:
    •  a co-convener of the “Instrumentation Frontier” (IF1) session and gave a report on Key points from IF01 - Quantum Sensors
    • a panelist for “Neutrino Frontier Connections, Progress, and Plans”
    • a panelist during the ”CPAD: Careers and Collaborations in Detector Instrumentation” session for a panel on workforce development, collaboration with industry and cross cutting technologies with outside HEP
  • Laura Newburgh, assistant professor of physics was a co-convener of the “Cosmic Frontier: CF5 Discussion” and gave a report on the CF5 Report Discussion

Talks

  • Maruyama was also a plenary speaker for the “Detector Technologies for the Next Decades” session; her talk was called “Detector needs for future cosmic experiments”
  • Heeger gave a talk in “Cross frontier sessions: UF-NF-RF Facilities for measurements of 0nbb and neutrinos from natural sources session” called “Future Bolometer Experiments”
  • Jay Huyn Jo, associate research scientist, gave a talk in the “Neutrino Physics Frontier: BSM/Dark Sectors & Reactor Neutrinos (Early Career Presentations)” session called “First Results from MicroBooNE’s Low Energy Excess Search and Constraints on eV-Scale Sterile Neutrino Oscillations”
  • Pranava Teja Surukuchi, postdoctoral associate, gave two talks:
    • in the “Neutrino Physics Frontier: Experimental Neutrino Anomalies” session called “Experimental Status: Radioactive Sources and Reactors over the Past 10 Years”
    •  in the “Neutrino Physics Frontier: Beyond neutrino mass physics reach of precision beta-decay experiments” session called “Overview of sterile-neutrino sensitivity in beta-spectrum measurements”

Posters

  • Sumita Ghosh, graduate student, “Single photon detectors for dark matter axion searches”
  • Michael Jewell, postdoctoral associate, “Updated Results from HAYSTAC’s Quantum-Enhanced Search for Dark Matter Axions”
  • Jorge Torres, postdoctoral associate, “CUPID: a next-generation neutrinoless double beta decay experiment”