Current Research Interests
I am currently very interested in neutrinos, which are fundamental particles that are shrouded in mystery. We don't know their mass; we don't know whether they violate CP symmetry; we don't even know whether they're their own antiparticles. All that makes them rather interesting! I have three major parallel efforts at the moment. First, I work on the KATRIN experiment to measure the absolute neutrino mass scale. Over time, my KATRIN work has come to include a molecular physics project, TRIMS, to study how molecular effects in the KATRIN source will affect the KATRIN measurement. Last but not least, I work on the COHERENT experiment, which seeks to measure an intriguing (but experimentally tricky) process called coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering.
My PhD experiment was a study of the spin structure of neutrons using a polarized electron beam and a polarized 3He target in Hall A of Jefferson Lab. (Here's a copy of my dissertation.) I also worked on Hall A's parity-violating electron scattering program, probing the strange content of the proton; quark-quark couplings in protons and neutrons; and neutron distribution in heavy nuclei. These are no longer active areas of research for me, but I try to keep up to date in the field.
We gratefully acknowledge that our work is supported by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, through Awards DE-SC0022125 and DE-SC0010118 (High-Energy Physics, Intensity Frontier) and DE-SC0019304 (Nuclear Physics, Fundamental Symmetries and Neutrinos). We are also grateful for support from alumnigifts.