Related papers: Mechanical detection of nuclear decays
Crystal damage events such as tracks and point defects have been used to record and detect radiation for a long time and recently they have been proposed as a means for dark matter detection. Color centers can be read out optically and we…
Dark matter (DM) particles with mass in the sub-GeV range are an attractive alternative to heavier weakly-interacting massive particles, but direct detection of such light particles is challenging. If however DM-nucleus scattering leads to…
Comprehensive description of the phenomenology of the $\beta\beta$ decay is given, with emphasis on the nuclear physics aspects. After a brief review of the neutrino oscillation results and of motivation to test the lepton number…
We study the question of whether coherent neutrino scattering can occur on macroscopic scales, leading to a significant increase of the detection cross section. We concentrate on radiative neutrino scattering on atomic electrons (or on free…
Optically levitated nanospheres are highly sensitive to the motion of their center of mass even under small momentum transfer. We propose detecting exotic particles via nucleon scattering in such spheres in the context of an ongoing…
For a class of macroscopic dark matter with a large interaction strength with Standard Model particles, a nucleus could be captured by the dense, heavy dark matter as it traverses ordinary material. The radiated photon carries most of the…
We describe a detection system designed for precise measurements of angular correlations in neutron $\beta$ decay. The system is based on thick, large area, highly segmented silicon detectors developed in collaboration with Micron…
We measure event-by-event discrete changes in the net electric charge of an optically levitated silica microsphere arising from individual radioactive decays within the sphere, in coincidence with energy depositions in a nearby…
The three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of nuclear recoils is of interest for directional detection of fast neutrons and for direction-sensitive searches for weakly interacting massive particles(WIMPs), which may constitute the Dark…
In this paper we propose a new method for measuring the cross section of low yield nuclear reactions by capturing the products in a cryogenically frozen noble gas solid. Once embedded in the noble gas solid, which is optically transparent,…
The search for a novel technology able to detect and reconstruct nuclear recoil events in the keV energy range has become more and more important as long as vast regions of high mass WIMP-like Dark Matter candidate have been excluded.…
The indirect detection of dark matter annihilation and decay using observations of photons, charged cosmic rays, and neutrinos offers a promising means of identifying the particle nature of this elusive component of the universe. The last…
Experiments using nuclei to probe new physics beyond the Standard Model, such as neutrinoless $\beta\beta$ decay searches testing whether neutrinos are their own antiparticle, and direct detection experiments aiming to identify the nature…
Cosmological observations indicate that most of the matter in the Universe is Dark Matter. Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) can be detected directly, via its elastic scattering off target nuclei. Most…
Detection techniques at radio wavelengths play an important role in the future of astrophysics experiments. The radio detection of cosmic rays, neutrinos, and photons has emerged as the technology of choice at the highest energies.…
We propose a method to measure the neutrino mass kinematically using beams of ions which undergo beta decay. The idea is to tune the ion beam momentum so that in most decays, the electron is forward moving with respect to the beam, and only…
Optomechanics, the study of the mechanical interaction of light with matter, has proven to be a fruitful area of research that has yielded many notable achievements, including the direct detection of gravitational waves in kilometer-scale…
Direct detection of dark matter with directional sensitivity is a promising concept for improving the search for weakly interacting massive particles. With information on the direction of WIMP induced nuclear recoils one has access to the…
Due to a directional asymmetry of neutrino emission caused by parity violation, a sample of radioactive atoms experiences a small recoil force from neutrino radiation accompanying electron capture by polarized nuclei. An expression for this…
We describe an approach to the study of neutrino masses that combines quantum optics techniques with radiation detectors to obtain unprecedented sensitivity. With it the search for Majorana neutrino masses down to $\sim$10 meV will become…