Neutron rich Mg isotopes far from stability belong to the island of inversion, a region where the single particle energy state description of the shell model breaks down and the predicted configuration of the nuclear states becomes inverted. Nuclei in this region also exhibit collective behaviour in which multiple particle interactions play a significant role in nuclear wavefunctions and...
At TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, the TIGRESS Integrated Plunger (TIP) and its configurable detector systems have been used for charged-particle tagging and light-ion identification in Doppler-shift lifetime measurements using gamma-ray spectroscopy with the TIGRESS array of HPGe detectors. An experiment using these devices to measure the lifetime of the $2^+_1$ state of...
Experiment S1758 aims to explore the charge dependence of the strong nuclear interaction by probing $^{55}$Ni and $^{55}$Co near the $\mathit{doubly}$ $\mathit{magic}$ $^{56}$Ni. This will be achieved by impinging beams of radioactive $^{20}$Na and stable $^{20}$Ne upon $^{40}$Ca targets to produce $^{55}$Ni and $^{55}$Co, respectively. Charged particles and $\gamma$-rays will be detected by...
The nuclear charge radius is a fundamental property of the nucleus, providing crucial information such as the emergence of deformation or unexpected "magicity". This structural information is paramount in probing the electroweak interaction, for example, through searches for atomic parity violation (APV) and electric dipole moments (EDM). Currently there are no experimentally measured absolute...
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) experiment is a novel low-background technique aimed at detecting low-mass (0.7-7 GeV/c2) WIMP interactions and coherent scattering of reactor neutrinos (CEvNS). The detector consists of a quartz-jar-filled liquid Argon (LAr), which is spiked with ppm-levels of liquid Xenon (LXe) acting as a wavelength shifter. The target fluid is de-pressurized into a...
The NEWS-G direct dark matter experiment uses spherical proportional counters (SPCs) to search for low mass WIMPs. The next phase of this experiment consists of a large 140 cm diameter SPC, called “SNOGLOBE”, which was recently installed at SNOLAB with improvements to overall detector performance and data quality. Prior to installation at SNOLAB, this detector was commissioned using pure...
The NEWS-G experiment searches for low mass dark matter using spherical proportional counters (SPCs). The primary ionization created by a particle interacting with the gas in the SPC drifts towards a central anode. When the ions approach the anode, the electric field becomes strong enough to trigger secondary ionizations, resulting in an amplified detector signal. In this talk I will present...
DEAP-3600 is a single-phase dark matter experiment searching for the direct detection of the dark matter signal using 3279 kg of liquid argon as the target material. In addition to the elastic interaction of the dark matter candidate, a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), with the argon nuclei, theories also predict the modulation in this signal rate with time due to the motion of the...
Bubble chambers using liquid xenon (and liquid argon) have been operated (resp. planned) by the Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration for GeV-scale dark matter searches and to detect CEvNS from nuclear reactors. This will require a robust calibration of the nucleation efficiency of low-energy nuclear recoils in these target media. Such a program has been carried out by the PICO...
The ATLAS detector has been at the frontier of high energy physics, gathering data from proton-proton collisions at the LHC for more than a decade. The instantaneous luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be increased up to a factor of five to seven with respect to the design value for the High Luminosity LHC. Several sub-systems of the ATLAS detector will be upgraded in order...
New Long-lived particles (LLPs) - ones that could travel long distances before decaying- are among numerous exotic signatures that would help address the universe’s biggest mysteries such as Dark Matter. Many Beyond the Standard Model theories that aim to address the limitations of the standard model point to the Higgs boson as a possible portal to new physics, where the Higgs successively...
According to the standard model, all flavours of leptons have equal couplings to gauge bosons - this is called lepton flavour universality. However, recently, experiments such as LHCb and Muon g-2 have reported findings, which suggest that this may not be the case, i.e. lepton flavour universality violation may occur. One way to explain these anomalies is through new particles called...
I present a new, open-source program, MUTE (MUon inTensity codE), which propagates cosmic ray muons from the atmosphere to laboratories deep underground and underwater using the most recent state-of-the-art computational tools. The evolution of cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere is computed with MCEq (Matrix Cascade Equation), using the latest theoretical primary and hadronic interaction...
A bubble chamber using fluorocarbons or liquid noble gases is a competitive technology to detect a low-energy nuclear recoil due to elastic scattering of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. It consists of a pressure and temperature-controlled vessel filled with a liquid in the superheated state. Bubble nucleation from liquid to vapor phase can only occur if the energy...
The heaviest elements observed in nature are understood to be produced by the rapid neutron capture process (r process), but which astrophysical site(s) host this process remains an open question. The extreme astrophysical conditions required to synthesize neutron-rich nuclei points to explosive events, and in fact core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) were a long favored site of heavy element...
The observation of elemental abundances in the most metal-poor stars have revealed the operation of a neutron-capture regime intermediate between the familiar slow (s) and rapid (r) process regimes. This i process can be activated when the H- and He-burning shells interact convectively, which is possible in low-metallicity conditions found in the early universe. The i process is the result of...
Exotic features like halo and the disappearance of the magic numbers were revealed by investigating the nuclei towards the neutron-rich region resulting from the large neutron/proton asymmetry. The halo occurrence in the neutron-rich nuclei originates due to a large spatial extension of the density of the outermost neutrons. The proton radius is an important property to understand the...
In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon in which (infinitesimally) small
fluctuations acting on a system crossing a critical point decide the system’s fate, by
determining which branch of bifurcation is taken. To an outside observer unaware of the
fluctuations, the choice will appear arbitrary. This process is called symmetry breaking,
because such transitions usually bring the...
I will discuss the conformal and non-conformal two Higgs doublet model with a focus on their phase transition and gravitational wave signatures. The construction of the finite temperature effective potential of both models will be discussed in detail. Compared to the non-conformal case, the conformal model yields a very interesting phase diagram in the 2-dimensional parameter space...
Axion dark matter (DM) constitutes an oscillating background that violates parity and time-reversal symmetries. Inside piezoelectric crystals, where parity is broken spontaneously, this axion background can result in a mechanical stress. We call this new phenomenon "the piezoaxionic effect". When the frequency of axion DM matches the natural frequency of a bulk acoustic normal mode of the...
The Antarctic Impulse Transient Antenna (ANITA) collaboration have reported observation of two anomalous events with noninverted polarity. These events are proven to be hard to explain in terms of conventional cosmic rays (CRs). We propose that these anomalous events represent the direct manifestation of the
dark matter (DM) annihilation events within the so-called axion quark...
The DEAP-3600 experiment (Dark matter Experiment using Argon Pulseshape discrimination) at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario is searching for dark matter via the elastic scattering of argon nuclei by dark matter particles as they traverse through the detector. The detector uses 255 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) looking at ~3300kg of liquid argon in a spherical vessel. In addition to being sensitive to...
An intriguing possibility for dark matter is that it formed bound states in the early Universe, in a scenario called “composite” dark matter, much like the Standard Model fundamental particles formed nucleons, nuclei and atoms. One of the simplest composite dark matter models consists of dark matter fermions bound together by a real scalar field. Composite states that are massive enough source...
In Fall 2019, the NEWS-G experiment used its latest detector, a 140 cm diameter Spherical Proportional Counter (SPC) to search for low mass dark matter at the Laboratoire souterrain de Modane (LSM), in France. When a particle interacts with an atom of gas inside the SPC, the ensuing recoil ionizes the gas and produces primary electrons that drift towards the centre of the sphere due to a...
The Spherical Proportional Counter (SPC) is used in NEWS-G to search for low-mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). UV laser and Ar37 calibration data were previously taken at Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (LSM) with a 1.35m diameter SPC filled with pure CH4 gas. To verify our understanding of the detector behavior and the physics model we use, a simulation of the SPC response...
The discrete-discrete atomic form factor is calculated for two non-equal masses of particles. The integral involving the product of Bessel functions and associated Laguerre polynomials is used to calculate the radial integral. An explicit analytical expression for the discrete-discrete transition form factor is presented exactly in the way they are implemented in the program. This atomic form...
Antihydrogen, the simplest atomic antimatter system, is an excellent platform to search for matter-antimatter asymmetries. The kinetic energy (and thus velocity) of synthesized antihydrogen trapped in the laboratory setting is very large relative to the energy well depth of the trap providing the confining force. Accuracy of any measurements performed on trapped antihydrogen, and the...
The ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) collaboration aims to test fundamental symmetries with matter and antimatter by testing CPT (charge conjugation, parity reversal, time reversal) theory and observing whether antimatter follows Einstein’s Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP), where the acceleration due to gravity that a body experiences is independent of its structure or composition....
The ALPHA project is a cornerstone of the effort to verify symmetries between matter and antimatter, with implications for understanding the baryon asymmetry and the evolution of our universe. The new ALPHA-g experiment aims to perform the first precision measurement the acceleration of anti-hydrogen atoms at rest in a gravitational field, a key piece of this puzzle.
This measurement...
It has been known for many years that an electron and its antiparticle, the positron, may together form a metastable hydrogen-like atom, known as positronium or Ps. In 1946, Wheeler speculated that two Ps atoms may combine to form the positronium molecule (Ps) stable with respect to auto-dissociation. In 2007 the existence of Ps was confirmed experimentally.
I will present a determination of...
The TUCAN (TRIUMF Ultra-Cold Advanced Neutron) Collaboration aims to build a new, intense source of ultracold neutrons (UCN). The first experimental use of the TUCAN source will be to complete a world-leading measurement of the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM), the discovery of which would support the search for new sources of CP violation beyond the Standard Model. Neutrons will be...
Hyper-K will be a next-generation long-baseline neutrino experiment with the goal of measuring neutrino flavour-mixing parameters and discovering CP-phase violation in the neutrino sector. To measure the unoscillated neutrino beam, Hyper-K will make use of the upcoming Intermediate Water-Cherenkov Detector, for which a new multi-photomultiplier photosensor module (mPMT) is being developed....
In this talk I will summarize my work towards the development of a prototype detector named miniHALO that will be used to test the designed neutrino detection method to be employed in the HALO-1kT supernova neutrino detector. The miniHALO prototype will be placed at the COHERENT underground laboratory where it will be used to make the neutrino-lead cross section measurements at the supernova...
EMPHATIC (Experiment to Measure the Production of Hadrons At a Testbeam In Chicagoland) is a low-cost, table-top-sized, hadron-production experiment located at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility (FTBF) that will measure hadron scattering and production cross sections that are relevant for neutrino flux predictions. High statistics data will be collected using a minimum bias trigger, enabling...
The A2 Collaboration uses the Mainz Microtron to conduct measurements probing hadron structure. An upcoming experiment will study Compton scattering off of helium-3 to obtain the polarizabilties of the neutron. To get a full picture of these events and reduce backgrounds, an active target is required. We intend to use a compact Time Projection Chamber (TPC) for this purpose, in combination...
The parity-violating electron scattering technique can be used to probe new physics beyond the Standard Model. High precision measurements of the parity-violating asymmetry with a variety of kinematics and targets enable scientific reach in particle physics, nuclear physics, and hadronic physics. To achieve precise measurements, experimental corrections to the measured asymmetries are...
We perform Next-to-the Leading Order (NLO) and quadratic level (NNLO) covariant approach to get the leptonic tensor for a general QED scattering process with a distinguishable target particle. The Feynman diagram of the scattering process in question is divided into upper (leptonic) and lower (either leptonic or hadronic) parts. The QED quadratic leptonic tensor is of the order of $\alpha^3$...
The planned Jefferson Lab Eta Factory (JEF) experiment relies on the construction of an updated electromagnetic calorimeter in the forward region of the GlueX detector in Hall D, to detect photons from eta and eta’ meson rare neutral decays. Focus on these decay channels is motivated by the search for signatures beyond the Standard Model, probing portals that couple the SM sector to the dark...
Studies of the exclusive production of the $\eta$ meson in photonuclear reactions offer a wide range of physics insight. These include constraining models of hadron photoproduction, insight into the spectrum of excited N* states, and may even provide a probe into the structure of the nucleon at wide-angles of production. GlueX, a high-intensity photoproduction experiment located at Hall D of...
The basic structure of quantum field theory that is used to describe the Standard Model of fundamental interactions of nature is usually formulated for zero temperature. However, the effects of temperature are extremely important for understanding a number of physical processes such as the electroweak phase transition and quark-gluon plasma.
The extension of quantum field theory to non-zero...
Molecules in which one or more of its constituting atoms contain a radioactive nucleus represent unexplored probes for new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics [1]. Radioactive atoms provide an additional degree of freedom to design molecular systems with, for instance, unmatched sensitivity to hitherto undiscovered permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs). Because of the link...
Precise tests of fundamental symmetries at low energy are an important tool for testing the Standard Model. Atomic parity violation (APV) measures the strength of highly forbidden atomic transitions induced by the parity violating (PV) exchange of Z bosons between electrons and quarks in heavy atoms. We are working towards measuring this effect in the heaviest alkali, francium, where the...
The breakdown of traditional magic numbers predicted by the shell model gives insight into the underlying nuclear interactions and acts as a test for existing models. Islands of inversion (IoI) in the nuclear landscape are characterized by the presence of deformed intruder ground states instead of the normal configurations predicted by the shell model. In the N=40 region, the relatively large...
Nuclei away from the line of stability have been found to demonstrate behavior that is inconsistent with the traditional magic numbers of the spherical shell model. This has led to the concept of the evolution of nuclear shell structure in exotic nuclei, and the neutron-rich Ca isotopes are a key testing ground of these theories; there have been conflicting results from various experiments as...
Understanding nuclear structure near 78Ni is crucial to infer how chemical elements originate in the Universe. State-of-the-art shell model calculations agree with observations from recent experiments regarding the persistence of the N = 50 shell closure in neutron-rich nuclei. How collectivity manifests and evolves in this region of the Segr ́e chart is still an open question, particularly...
In this talk I will present developments and potential upgrades for TRIUMF's ARIEL and ISAC facilities from an accelerator physicist's point of view. I will start my talk with ongoing projects on ISAC, i.e increase beam time through model based beam tuning and reaching higher charge states with two frequency heating of the charge state booster. I will then continue with potential future...
The Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) is based at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Using low energy antiprotons we produce, trap, and study the bound state of an antiproton and positron, antihydrogen [1]. Given the long history of atomic physics experiments with hydrogen, experiments with antihydrogen offer some of the most precise tests of quantum...
A temperature ($T$)- dependent universal decay law (UDL) of cluster decay is investigated by fitting the half-lives calculated within the $T$-dependent Double Folding model (DFM), in which the temperature dependence of the effective potential is introduced through the charge and matter density distributions of the interacting nuclei, and the half-lives are calculated within a preformed cluster...
The goal of our project is to determine the radiation of photons emitted in a nuclear beta decay including the effect of the interaction with the parent nucleus. In this talk, I will explain in an accessible way Schwinger's proper-time method and illustrate how it determines the electron's Green Function. As one application, I will describe the electron's anomalous magnetic moment (g-2).
The proposed nEXO experiment is searching for neutrinoless double beta decay (0$\nu\beta \beta$) in $^{136}$Xe in a five tonne liquid Xe time-projection chamber (TPC). The addition of Barium tagging may allow for the positive identification of a candidate 0$\nu\beta \beta$ event as a true $\beta \beta$ decay, by extracting and identifying the daughter Ba ion. The nEXO collaboration is pursuing...
Many particle detectors house their liquid scintillators in an acrylic vessel. The acrylic may be coated by a wavelength shifter in situations where the scintillation light is outside the range of the photodetectors. We have investigated the low-temperature properties of pyrene as an alternative to 1,1,4,4-tetraphenyl-1,3-butadiene (TPB) as pyrene has a much longer fluorescence time which...
A test-bench is created that injects digital pulses that emulate ATLAS Liquid Argon (LAr) Front End Board electronic signal pulses in order to test prototypes. The prototypes are for new electronics for an upgrade to the CERN Large Hadron Collider that increases the rate of proton-proton collisions by an order of magnitude. This High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider requires a completely new...
The Light-only Liquid Xenon (LoLX) experiment is designed to study the properties of light emission and transport in liquid xenon (LXe) using silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). In addition, we also plan to perform long-term stability studies of the SiPMs in LXe. Another important goal of the LoLX experiment is to characterize and utilize the differences in the timing of Cherenkov and...
The Beam Lifetime 3 (BL3) experiment at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA, aims to improve the precision of neutron lifetime measurements and we hopefully resolve the inconsistency by improving the precision. In the BL3 experiment, a Geant4 based simulation has been used to model, develop, and optimize the experimental setup. The physics list, which is used to simulate...
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a cutting-edge accelerator experiment proposed to study the origin of mass and the nature of the ''glue'' that binds the building blocks of the visible matter in the universe. The proposed experiment will be realized at Brookhaven National Laboratory approximately 10 years from now, with the detector design and R&D currently ongoing. Notably, EIC can be one...
Despite the success of the Standard Model of particle physics, there are still phenomena such as dark matter that it doesn't explain. New particles light enough to be created at accelerators could resolve many of these issues, but could exist anywhere across a very wide range of masses and behaviours. Physicists are using many different experiments to search for them, each optimised for a...
Potassium-40 ($^{40}$K) is a naturally-occurring, radioactive isotope of interest to rare-event searches as a challenging background. In particular, NaI scintillators contain $^{40}$K contamination which produces an irreducible $\sim 3\text{ keV}$ signal originating from this isotope's electron capture (EC) decays. In geochronology, the $\mathcal{O}(\text{Gy})$ lifetime of $^{40}$K is utilized...
The New Small Wheel (NSW) detectors have recently been added to the ATLAS muon end-cap system. The detector is composed of two technologies: Micromegas (MM) and small-strip Thin Gap Chambers (sTGC). The sTGCs are fast tracking detectors that will allow ATLAS to veto fake muons and maintain a low trigger threshold. An sTGC quadruplet is composed of four gas volumes where an individual gas...
A network of 15 pixelated detectors based on Timepix ASICs was installed in ATLAS cavern to measure the Radiation Field composition and Luminosity during CERN-LHC Run 2. The Timepix detectors are capable of measuring Luminosity with 5 different algorithms namely Cluster Counting Algorithm, Hit Counting Algorithm, Total Deposited Energy Algorithm, Thermal Neutron Counting Algorithm and MIPs...
The most commonly produced objects in the ATLAS detector are jets, streams of particles spreading out from the proton-proton collision point. Jets develop from the constituent quarks and gluons of the protons. These particles carry color charge, and as such cannot exist freely under QCD confinement, and a chain reaction of quark/gluon production begins. Eventually, the quarks and gluons...
