Soon the largest fusion project in the world, ITER, will attempt to produce more fusion power than required to sustain the fusion reaction, this is known as ignition. The tokamak (a toroidal fusion device) being built in France will be running at such high temperatures that heat distribution is a...
This project focuses on building a test stand in order to measure novel scintillator
materials’ decay times. A proof of concept prototype confirms the manufacturer decay
time of EJ-204 and LYSO scintillators with good statistics and confirmation of results
after calibrations. With the prototype functional, the test stand is commissioned...
Understanding how particles behave in detectors is a critical part of analyzing data from neutrino experiments. There are methods in place to track charged particles in scintillator material, but neutral particles such as neutrons are more difficult to characterize. The purpose of this project was to assess and calibrate methods...
Fast neutron detection is important to the detection of illicit nuclear materials and can help prevent those materials from being used or transported without discovery. Previous research has shown that Heavy Oxide Inorganic Scintillator crystals can be used to detect fast neutrons by capitalizing on their high inelastic scattering cross...
One of the biggest open questions in physics is the prevalence of matter over anti-matter in the present universe. One of possible answers lies in the violation of charge and parity symmetry in the lepton sector that would favor matter over anti-matter so that the universe becomes dominated by matter...