UW Physics

Experimental Neutrino Physics and Astroparticle Physics

The experimental neutrino and astroparticle physics group in the UW Physics Department consists of 7 Professors and 10 Research Scientists, 7 postdocs, 16 graduate students and numerous undergraduate students. We offer a wide range of research opportunities. The IceCube Center at 222 W Washington , laboratory facilities in Chamberlin Hall, and the Physical Sciences Laboratory offer unparalleled infrastructure and technical support for these exciting projects. For further information see the individual project links below. Some of the detectors are taking data, some are under construction and some are at the planning stage. The group offers an ideal environment for research covering data analysis to hardware.

Project Description	Logo and Web Sites	Faculty
The University of Wisconsin is the lead institution for the IceCube project, the first kilometer-scale neutrino observatory located at the South Pole. The observation of extra-terrestrial neutrinos has the potential to open a new window on the Universe. Recently, the DeepCore infill of IceCube has been installed opening new opportunities for the study of dark matter and oscillating atmospheric neutrinos.	IceCube project | IceCube @ UW Deep Core project | Deep Core @ UW	Halzen, Karle, Maruyama, Westerhoff
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest extensive air shower array ever built to study the highest energy cosmic rays. This experiment's data probe understanding the most powerful cosmic accelerators.	Auger project | Auger@ UW	Westerhoff
We probe neutrino mass and mixing and study the fundamental properties of neutrinos in a variety of particle and nuclear physics experiments. Wisconsin is one of the lead groups in the Daya Bay reactor experiment to measure the yet unknown neutrino mixing angle theta13. CUORE tests whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles in the search for neutrinoless double beta decay. A bolometric measurement of the neutrino mass is underway with the MARE experiment. The DUSEL laboratory will become the largest facility for underground physics in the US, and our group is participating in the long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment between Fermilab and DUSEL (DUSEL-LBNE).	Daya Bay project | Daya Bay @ UW CUORE project | CUORE @ UW LBNE project MARE project | MARE @ UW	Balantekin, Heeger   Heeger, Maruyama     Balantekin, Heeger, Karle     Heeger, McCammon
Other activities include High Energy Gamma Astronomy with the HAWC project, an extensive air shower array to be built at 4100 m a.s.l. in Mexico. HAWC will be the ideal locator for IceCube neutrino sources since neutrinos and gammas are produced by the same mechanisms in cosmic ray sources.	HAWC project | HAWC @ UW	Westerhoff
A development project to build a radio array for the detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos, the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) project, is going on tbe colocated with IceCube. and its first phase covers 50 square-kilometers.	ARA project | ARA @ UW	Halzen, Karle
An observable signature of dark matter is the annual modulation of the rate of dark matter-nucleon interactions taking place in an Earth-bound experiment.  To search for this effect, a dark matter experiment using NaI scintillation detectors are deployed deep in the South Pole ice.  This experiment complements dark matter search efforts in the Northern Hemisphere and will investigate the observed annual modulation in the DAMA/LIBRA and DAMA/NaI experiments.  The unique location will permit the study of background effects correlated with seasonal variations and the surrounding environment.	DM-ICE project	Heeger, Maruyama