The Parno Group

Experimental neutrino physics at Carnegie Mellon University

Welcome!

I am an experimental physicist at Carnegie Mellon University. I'm currently involved in three experiments: KATRIN (an effort in southwestern Germany to measure the absolute mass scale of the neutrino using tritium beta decay), COHERENT (an effort in Tennessee to precisely measure coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, or CEvNS, using several different types of detectors), and TRIMS (an effort in Seattle to test the molecular-physics theories that are used in extracting the final KATRIN result). Between these experiments, my group works on everything from simulation to detector design to operations to data analysis.

Recent Group News

  • September 2024: I am honored to hold the new Falco-DeBenedetti Career Development Chair in Physics. this article gives some information about the remarkable family legacy that made this possible.
  • July 2024: Congratulations to our postdoc Dr. Kirsten McMichael who is joining the faculty at Washington & Jefferson University in Washington, PA as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics! From August 1 until the end of 2024, Kirsten will spend 50% of her time teaching at W&J, and 50% continuing her research with our group, before transitioning fully to W&J in 2025.
  • June 2024: New KATRIN results: We now know the effective neutrino mass is less than 0.45 eV (90% confidence level) based on our first 259 days of measurement! Check out our preprint.
  • June 2024: New COHERENT results: First measurement of CEvNS on Ge! Check out our preprint.
  • June 2024: We're at The Magnificent CEvNS workshop and Neutrino conference. Diana is giving the overview talk on the COHERENT experiment at Magnificent CEvNS. Gen and Kirsten will give a poster on Module 2 of the heavy-water detector at both conferences. Byron will give a poster on the KATRIN rear wall at Neutrino.
  • May 2024: We're at The DPF/PHENO meeting in Pittsburgh. Diana is on the local organizing committee. Byron, Gen and Kirsten will give talks.
  • March 2023: We're at The Workshop on Neutrino Interaction Measurements for Supernova Neutrino Detection is happening at Oak Ridge National Lab. Diana is an organizer and is giving a talk on the COHERENT experiment.
  • January 2023: PhD student Byron Daniel is a finalist in CMU's Three Minute Thesis competition -- the only finalist doing basic science research.
  • 2022: Our KATRIN Snowmass white paper has been published in J. Phys. G!. Read it here. Diana was the primary editor.
  • 2022: Our KATRIN review paper has been published at Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science. Read it here. Diana is one of five authors.
  • August 2022: Congratulations to Dr. Rebecca Rapp for successfully defending her PhD thesis, Characterizing neutrino and neutron fluxes from the Spallation Neutron Source for the COHERENT experiment! Becca is going on to a faculty position in Computer & Information Studies at Washington & Jefferson University in Washington, PA.
  • 2022: The COHERENT paper on simulating the SNS neutrino flux has been published in Phys. Rev. D! Read it here. Becca was lead author with substantial contributions from undergraduate student Aria Salyapongse.
  • November 2021: Congratulations to Dr. Ana Paula Vizcaya Hernandez for successfully defending her PhD thesis, Toward a Measurement of the Neutrino Mass with Tritium: Ion Studies for the KATRIN and TRIMS Experiments! Ana Paula is going on to a postdoc position at Colorado State.
  • June 2021: Congratulations to Dr. Larisa Thorne for successfully defending her PhD thesis, modeling and fitting KATRIN spectra with CMKAT! Larisa is going on to a postdoc position at University of Mainz.
  • May 2021: Dr Parno has been granted an Early Career Award to help build a D2O detector for the COHERENT experiment! See CMU writeup
  • 2021: KATRIN's new physics result from its second run: Check preprint here
  • 2021: COHERENT paper on plans for the D2O detector: Check preprint here
  • 2021:The KATRIN hardware paper has been accepted by JINST! Larisa is one of four main editors/authors on this gigantic effort. Check preprint here
  • 2021: The long paper on analysis methods for KATRIN's first neutrino-mass results has been accepted by PRD! Diana is one of two main authors on this paper. Check preprint here.
  • 2020: Congratulations to PhD student Rebecca Rapp, who will work at ORNL for six months on a Department of Energy graduate fellowship.
  • 2020:COHERENT's discovery of CEvNS on liquid argon has been accepted by PRL! Published paper here
  • 2020: TRIMS' first results are published in PRL! Here's the paper showing agreement with theory.
  • December 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Ying-Ting Lin, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis on The Tritium Recoil-Ion Mass Spectrometer Experiment (TRIMS) at the University of Washington!
  • March 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Luke Kippenbrock, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis on Investigation of Background from the Inter-Spectrometer Penning Trap and Secondary Electron Emission in the KATRIN Experiment at the University of Washington!