I’m an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame. My group does accelerator-based experimental neutrino physics. We collaborate on experiments at Fermilab (in Batavia, Illinois, USA) and at CERN (in Geneva, Switzerland).
Neutrinos are one of the elementary particles of the Standard Model. They have several properties that make them unique. For instance, they interact only via the weak nuclear force. As a consequence of this, they interact very, very rarely. Neutrinos also have very tiny masses compared to the other particles of the Standard Model. Their small, non-zero masses mean that they undergo a phenomenon called Neutrino Oscillations, wherein the three flavors of neutrinos (electron, muon, and tau) transform between one another as they travel through space. Understanding these oscillations and other properties of neutrinos is the primary goal of modern particle physics. The Fields group collaborates on the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, which is currently under construction at Fermilab and in South Dakota. DUNE will be the flagship accelerator-based neutrino experiment in the United States and is expected to run for several decades and uncover many secrets of neutrinos.
Studying the fundamental properties of neutrinos requires very precise understanding of the experimental environment we use to measure them, including neutrino beams and neutrino interactions in detectors. Our group collaborates on several additional experiments that aim to provide precise models of neutrino beams and neutrino interactions, including the MINERvA and EMPHATIC experiments at Fermilab and the NA61 experiment at CERN.