Biographical Sketch:
Max Silva-Feaver completed his bachelor’s in physics from Santa Clara University in 2015. In 2015-2016, he worked on developing microwave multiplexing electronics for X-ray and CMB sensor applications and designing the DM-Radio pathfinder experiment as a research assistant for Prof. Kent Irwin at Stanford University. He completed his doctorate in 2023, advised by Prof. Kam Arnold on developing the readout electronics and deploying the first Small Aperture Telescope for the Simons Observatory. He started as a Mossman Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Wright Laboratory in 2023, working on the analysis of Simons Observatory Small Aperture Telescope data and design and construction of the ALPHA and HAYSTAC-phase III axion haloscopes.
He believes that developing room for young members to succeed in large science collaborations is as essential as individual university support. To this end, he has actively developed structural changes to improve graduate and postdoctoral researcher representation within the Simons Observatory and ALPHA projects.
Research:
Max works in the fields of Cosmology and Dark Matter direct detection. He is a member of the Simons Observatory (SO) Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment, and the HAYSTAC and ALPHA Axion direct-detection experiments.
For his Ph.D. research, he designed, constructed, deployed, and tested the first SO Small Aperture Telescope (SAT). Within SO, he focused on camera readout electronics: the SLAC Microwave Radio Frequency (SMuRF) electronics, which were custom built to read out the superconducting microwave multiplexer cryogenic circuit capable of measuring ~1000 superconducting camera pixels on a single readout line. He led early testing and design iteration with the SLAC (DoE National Research Laboratory) team. He ultimately oversaw the system integration and operation at the SO high-elevation site in the Atacama Desert in Chile. He maintained the telescopes since their commissioning (Oct 2023). In 2022, he began working on the SO SAT data reduction and analysis pipeline utilizing simulation and North American lab data as a predoctoral research fellow at the Flatiron Institute. He continues this effort with the on-sky data as a Yale Mossman Fellow.
Max joined the HAYSTAC and ALPHA axion direct detection experiments at Yale. HAYSTAC is a microwave cavity haloscope that has set the tightest constraints on Axion-like dark matter in the 15-25 micro-electronvolt mass range operating since 2016. He is upgrading HAYSTAC to extend its sensitivity to a 30-35 micro-electronvolt mass range. ALPHA is a new experiment sited at Yale that will probe the 40-80 micro-electronvolt mass range using a new technique based on coupling the axion field to a tunable plasma resonance. He is designing and testing the ALPHA microwave receiver system and integrating the ALPHA haloscope at Yale.
Education:
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 2023
