Current Projects
ATLAS
Links: ATLAS website, CERN website, Yale website, O. Keith Baker, Sarah Demers, Paul Tipton
ATLAS is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. It investigates a wide range of physics, from the search for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter. The interactions in the ATLAS detectors create an enormous flow of data. To reduce the data volume, ATLAS uses an advanced “trigger” system to tell the detector which events to record and which to ignore. The Yale teams analyze data from ATLAS and are part of the ATLAS leadership in physics, operations and the upgrade. Yale is a Trigger and Data Acquisition Institute with design and validation responsibilities, and Yale constructs staves and performs sensor R&D for the ATLAS tracker upgrade.
COSINE-100
Links: COSINE-100 website, DM-Ice website, Reina Maruyama
COSINE-100 is a NaI(Tl) direct detection dark matter experiment, a collaboration between the DM-Ice and KIMS experiments. The first phase of the experiment deployed 106 kg of NaI(Tl) at Yangyang underground laboratory in South Korea. COSINE-100 started to take physics data in September 2016 with an aim to test DAMA Collaboration’s claim that they have made a direct detection of dark matter with their thallium-doped sodium iodide detectors. Prof. Reina Maruyama is the Principal Investigator of the experiment.
Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion CDM (HAYSTAC)
Links: HAYSTAC website, Steve Lamoreaux, Reina Maruyama
HAYSTAC is looking for galactically-bound cold dark matter (CDM) in the form of Axions, which are very low mass particles that are predicted in the context of the standard model of electroweak interactions (quark, gluon, W, Z, Higgs, etc. are all part of this model). If they do indeed exist and form dark matter, they will convert to radiofrequency photons in the presence of a strong magnetic field. The photon energy, hence frequency, is essentially determined by the axion mass, and is expected to be in the 1-20 GHz region. The heart of our experiment is a tunable radiofrequency (microwave) cavity resonator, which serves to build up the axion signal, and a quantum limited amplifier based on the Josephson effect which occurs when Cooper pairs tunnel though an insulating layer separating two superconductors. HAYSTAC is located at Wright Lab and the Yale team is responsible for systems engineering, cryogenics and magnetics.
Please see also our page on Neutrinos and Fundamental Symmetries for related projects.