• Atlas cutaway

    A Slice of Atlas Detector

    A cut-away view of the ATLAS detector.  The magnetic toroid for the muon system, which is a focus of the UMass Atlas team, is displayed in gray.

  • g-2 at FNAL

    Muon g-2 Anomaly

    The Muon g-2 experiment in its home at Fermilab, run by a collaboration of 7 countries and 35 institutions, including UMass. The experiment recently published the most precise measurement to date of the muon magnetic moment. The result hints at a discrepancy with the Standard Model of particle physics. Find out more more at UMass News, YouTube, and the New York Times. (Photo credit: Fermilab)

  • immagine_2.jpeg

    Borexino Solar Neutrino Detector

    The Borexino prototype detector (CTF) shown here, a 4-ton spherical scintillator target surrounded by ultra-pure water and 100 photomultiplier tubes, operated between 1994 and 2003. The tubes detect flashes of light from ionizing radiation (including neutrinos) occurring in the scintillating volume. A thin nylon "shroud" prevents radioactive contamination from entering the center-most volume of the detector. The main Borexino experiment has been taking data since 2007.

    Credit: Borexino Collaboration

  • Sanford Experimental Hall

    Sanford Underground Laboratory

    An experiment hall nearly one mile underground at Sanford Underground Laboratory, being refurbished for the LUX and LZ experiments. Great depths are required to reduce background radiation from cosmic rays and make sensitive neutrino and dark matter searches possible.

  • g-2 magnet

    A Magnet Goes to Fermilab.

    The 50-foot diameter magnet racetrack as it started its 3200-mile journey from Brookhaven New York to Fermilab in Illinois, where it was eventually installed in the Muon g-2 experiment. A UMass team led by Prof. David Kawall has taken on the challenging responsibility of measuring and calibrating the magnetic field for the experiment. Read more at FNAL news and APS news. (Photo credit: Fermilab)

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Physics Department at UMass Amherst

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Romain Vasseur tenured and promoted

Romain Vasseur

Romain Vasseur has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. Romain is a condensed matter theorist working on strongly correlated quantum systems. He is interested in new emergent phenomena, both in equilibrium and in non-equilibrium quantum systems, that come from the interplay of strong interactions and quantum entanglement. Romain was awarded a Sloan Fellowship in 2017, and has received funding from NSF, DOE and AFOSR. Read more about him and his research on his website and on his Physics Spotlight profile.

Congratulations, Romain!

CNS awards for Dept Manager Sara Cooper and Profs. Don Candela and Verena Martinez Outschoorn

Sara Cooper, Don Candela, Verena Martinez

In this year's Outstanding Achievement Awards, the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) recognized no less than 3 Physics Department Members. Department Manager Sara Cooper received the Outstanding Staff Award. Prof. Don Candela received the Outstanding Teaching Award, and Assoc. Prof. Verena Martinez Outschoorn the Outstanding (Early Career) Research Award. Read more about their awards, or watch the entire recording of the award ceremony here. Congratulations, Sara, Don and Verena!

PREx-II announces precise measurement of neutron "skin" thickness of Pb nucleus

Chandan Ghosh working on PREX detectors

The PREx-II collaboration, of which Gluckstern Professor Krishna Kumar is co-spokesperson, recently published exciting new findings detailing the size of the lead (Pb) nucleus. Neutrons in heavier nuclei tend to bulge out beyond the protons in the nucleus, forming a "skin". Prof. Kumar and his group played a key role in PREx, or Pb Radius Experiment, at Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia, that achieved a precise measurement of the thickness of this skin. Based on a paper by former UMass Prof. John Dubach and others, the technique exploits the neutral weak force, allowing the team to use electron scattering measurements to probe the structure of the nucleus. The picture at left shows UMass postdoc Chandan Ghosh assembling the PREX-II detectors at Jefferson Lab before the 2019 run. Read more about this path-breaking discovery on Science News, APS Physics, Physics Today, and UMass News, among others. Congratulations, KK and collaborators!

Fermilab's Muon g-2 Experiment hints at Physics beyond the Standard Model

Muon g-2

UMass Physics Professor David Kawall and his group, grad student David Kessler and former postdocs David Flay and Jimin George, are part of the Muon g-2 collaboration at Fermilab that has just published a long-awaited measurement of the magnetic moment anomaly of the muon. Accurate to 8 significant figures, and consistent with a previous measurement, the result differs from a prediction of the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative, and most significantly, hints at the influence of long-sought new physics beyond the standard model. UMass professor Toichiro Kinoshita and collaborators carried out some of the most precise calculations in all of physics required in the predictions. The experiment continues to take and analyze data, and should have updated results within a year. Read more about this landmark discovery on UMass News, APS Physics, which quotes Prof. Kawall, and the New York Times.

Goldwater Scholarship for Physics and Astronomy junior Meredith Stone

Meredith Stone

One of the three UMass awardees of the 2021 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship is junior Physics and Astronomy major Meredith Stone. This prestigious national scholarship recognizes students pursuing research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering. Read more about this on UMass News. Congratulations, Meredith!

Verena Martinez Outschoorn tenured and promoted

Verena

Verena Martinez Outschoorn has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. Verena's high energy experimental physics group is a part of the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, working on new physics that will help elucidate the mechanisms behind the observed light Higgs boson mass and the nature of dark matter. 

Congratulations, Verena !

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