Over the last 15 years our group has been central to many developments in the field of neutrino physics. Click here for more of our group history
In recent times, this interest has been focused on searches for neutrinoless double beta decay. The discovery of such a decay would establish the existence of 2-component Majorana Fermions (mundane Fermions, like the electron, are 4-component Dirac particles), demonstrate the violation of the lepton number conservation and, possibly, establish the neutrino mass scale. A short article in Physics World explains the search for neutrinoless double beta decay.
The data taking of the EXO-200 experiment was completed in Dec 2018. This was the first “100kg class” experiment to start taking data and produced some of the most advanced results in the world. We recently published the final neutrinoless double beta decay search with this detector, but data analysis for other topics is still ongoing, specifically in our group.
As the work on EXO-200 is winding down, we are aggressively pursuing the finalization of the design of nEXO, a 5-tonne detector that we hope will become the flagship experiment in this area. Our group is very active in a number of areas of nEXO R&D, including the optimization of charge collection devices, the integration of Silicon Photomultipliers with charge readout, high voltage and detector calibration. We operate a liquid Xenon system at Stanford, with a new, larger one under construction.
In the last several years we have also started a program to develop new measurements in the area of fundamental physics using optically levitated microspheres. This work started from our interest in testing the inverse square law of gravity below 50 micron distance but more recently evolved into other measurements, down to the quantum regime.
We also have a program to develop novel radiation detectors for application to science, homeland security and medical physics.
We have openings for new graduate students in (almost) all of the projects above.
Name | Position | Office | Phone | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Giorgio Gratta | Professor | Varian 146 | (650) 725-6509 | gratta@stanford.edu |
Sha Zhang | Adm. Assistant | Varian 148 | (650) 723-2314 | shazhang@stanford.edu |
Ralph DeVoe | Consulting Professor | Varian 128B | (650) 723-6342 | rgdevoe@stanford.edu |
Alex Fieguth | Postdoc | Varian 132 | (650) 725-2946 | afieguth@stanford.edu |
Brian Lenardo | Postdoc | Varian 132 | (650) 725-2946 | blenardo@stanford.edu |
Evan Angelico | Postdoc | Varian 128B | (650) 723-6342 | eangelic@stanford.edu |
Nadav Priel | Postdoc | Varian 128A | (650) 723-4612 | nadavp@stanford.edu |
Shuoxing Wu | Postdoc | Varian 132 | (650) 725-2946 | sxwu@stanford.edu |
Chas Blakemore | Graduate Student | Varian 134 | (650) 723-7828 | cblakemore@stanford.edu |
Jacopo Dalmasson | Graduate Student | Varian 136 | (650) 725-2342 | jdalmass@stanford.edu |
Denzal Martin | Graduate Student | Varian 134 | (650) 723-7828 | domartin@stanford.edu |
Clarke Alistair Hardy | Graduate Student | Varian 132 | (650) 723-2946 | cahardy@stanford.edu |
Mahiro Abe | Graduate Student | Varian 136 | (650) 725-2342 | mahiro@stanford.edu |
Emmett Hough | Undergraduate Student | Varian 132 | (650) 723-2946 | emhough@stanford.edu |
Zhaoyi Li | Undergraduate Student | Varian 132 | (650) 723-2946 | ladmon@stanford.edu |
Aspen Stuart_Cunningham | Undergraduate Student | Varian 132 | (650) 723-2946 | aspensc@stanford.edu | Mateo Massey | Undergraduate Student | Varian 132 | (650) 723-2946 | mbmassey@stanford.edu |
Kevin Wells | Visitor from the theory group at Stanford | Varian 136 | (650) 725-2342 | kcwells@stanford.edu |
Site maintenance: Sha Zhang.
Design: Giulio Gratta