Laura Baudis

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Laura Baudis
Born(1969-10-29)October 29, 1969
Timișoara
NationalitySwiss and German
Alma mater University of Heidelberg
(Ph.D. in Physics)
Occupation Astrophysicist

Laura Baudis (1969) is a Romanian-born Swiss particle astrophysicist. She is employed as a full professor by the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her research focuses on dark matter and neutrino physics. She is a member of the science strategy team for XENON as well as the CERN Scientific Policy Committee (2016–18) [1] and the PSI Research Committee for Particle Physics.

Contents

Early life, education and family

Baudis was born on October 29, 1969, in Timișoara, Romania. She attended the Lyceum for Mathematics and Physics, [2] where she developed a fascination for mathematics, literature, philosophy, and architecture. [3] After Romanian communist party leader Nicolae Ceaușescu died in 1989, her family moved to Heidelberg. [4] She attended the Geschwister-Scholl Gymnasium in Mannheim.

She proceeded to study physics at the University of Heidelberg in 1993 and obtained her Ph.D. in 1999 ibidem. [2]

During her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics from 1997 to 1999. After obtaining her Ph.D., she became a postdoctoral fellow at the department of physics at Stanford University from 2000 to 2003. She was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Florida in 2003 and stayed there until 2006 when she became a Lichtenberg-Professor for Astroparticle Physics at RWTH-Achen. She has been a Professor for Physics at the University of Zurich since 2007. [2]

She is married and mother of two. [5]

Academic career

During her studies at the University of Heidelberg, Baudis worked on double beta decay and the detection of Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). [6] In particular, she investigated how neutrinoless double-beta decay could be used in the search for dark matter. [7] She participated in the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, a collaboration that aimed to detect dark matter in the form of WIMPs. [7] Since 2004, she has contributed to the XENON dark matter research project, which uses a chamber filled with liquid xenon to detect particle interactions. [8] As part of the XENON project, she studied the technical limitations of current detection methods, with an emphasis on improving the sensitivity of direct dark matter detectors. [9] [10] [11] [12] These efforts were continued in the DARWIN project, [13] which involves research and development on WIMP detectors. Like XENON, the DARWIN project aims to increase the sensitivity of liquid xenon detectors until they have a realistic chance of detecting and studying dark matter. [14]

In 2011 at the international symposium on subnuclear physics held in Vatican City, she gave a talk Results from the XENON100 Dark Matter Search Experiment. [15]

Awards and positions

From 1997 until 1999, Baudis held a fellowship of the research training group at the University of Heidelberg for "Experimental methods in nuclear and particle physics". In 2005, she received the NSF Career Award. [16] In 2006, she was awarded a Lichtenberg Professorship by the Volkswagen foundation. In 2013, she was offered a Canada Excellence Research Chair at Queens University, which she declined. [17] The American Physical Society (APS) named her a Fellow in 2015 "for leadership and outstanding contributions to experimental searches for astrophysical dark matter by direct detection and for double beta decay". [18] In 2017, Baudis received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council for her project concerning a multi-ton xenon observatory for particle astrophysics. [19] [20] The Advanced Grant supported Baudis's project with over 3 million euros. [19] Since 2019, she has held a Visiting Miller Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley. [21] In 2022, Baudis was awarded the Charpak-Ritz Prize by the French and Swiss Physical Society. [22]

Baudis is a member of the CERN Science Policy Committee [23] and Editor-in-chief of the European Physical Journal C. [24] She is a member of the KIT Center for Elementary Particle and Astroparticle Physics (KCETA) advisory board, [25] the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium's scientific advisory committee, [26] and was on the scientific advisory committee of the Technical University of Munich's Excellence Cluster. [27] She has been a co-spokesperson for the XENON Experiment, and is the founder and spokesperson of the DARWIN project [28] [29] and was on the University of Zurich's Graduate Campus Board.

Related Research Articles

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are hypothetical particles that are one of the proposed candidates for dark matter.

The XENON dark matter research project, operated at the Italian Gran Sasso National Laboratory, is a deep underground detector facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to detect hypothetical dark matter particles. The experiments aim to detect particles in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by looking for rare nuclear recoil interactions in a liquid xenon target chamber. The current detector consists of a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC).

The ArDM Experiment was a particle physics experiment based on a liquid argon detector, aiming at measuring signals from WIMPs, which may constitute the Dark Matter in the universe. Elastic scattering of WIMPs from argon nuclei is measurable by observing free electrons from ionization and photons from scintillation, which are produced by the recoiling nucleus interacting with neighbouring atoms. The ionization and scintillation signals can be measured with dedicated readout techniques, which constituted a fundamental part of the detector.

Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astrophysical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emerging at the intersection of particle physics, astronomy, astrophysics, detector physics, relativity, solid state physics, and cosmology. Partly motivated by the discovery of neutrino oscillation, the field has undergone rapid development, both theoretically and experimentally, since the early 2000s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DEAP</span> Dark matter search experiment

DEAP is a direct dark matter search experiment which uses liquid argon as a target material. DEAP utilizes background discrimination based on the characteristic scintillation pulse-shape of argon. A first-generation detector (DEAP-1) with a 7 kg target mass was operated at Queen's University to test the performance of pulse-shape discrimination at low recoil energies in liquid argon. DEAP-1 was then moved to SNOLAB, 2 km below Earth's surface, in October 2007 and collected data into 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Large Underground Xenon experiment</span> Dark matter detection experiment

The Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) aimed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter interactions with ordinary matter on Earth. Despite the wealth of (gravitational) evidence supporting the existence of non-baryonic dark matter in the Universe, dark matter particles in our galaxy have never been directly detected in an experiment. LUX utilized a 370 kg liquid xenon detection mass in a time-projection chamber (TPC) to identify individual particle interactions, searching for faint dark matter interactions with unprecedented sensitivity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Light dark matter</span> Dark matter weakly interacting massive particles candidates with masses less than 1 GeV

Light dark matter, in astronomy and cosmology, are dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) candidates with masses less than 1 GeV. These particles are heavier than warm dark matter and hot dark matter, but are lighter than the traditional forms of cold dark matter, such as Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). The Lee-Weinberg bound limits the mass of the favored dark matter candidate, WIMPs, that interact via the weak interaction to GeV. This bound arises as follows. The lower the mass of WIMPs is, the lower the annihilation cross section, which is of the order , where m is the WIMP mass and M the mass of the Z-boson. This means that low mass WIMPs, which would be abundantly produced in the early universe, freeze out much earlier and thus at a higher temperature, than higher mass WIMPs. This leads to a higher relic WIMP density. If the mass is lower than GeV the WIMP relic density would overclose the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Underground Rare Event Calorimeter Array</span> Planned dark matter search experiment

The European Underground Rare Event Calorimeter Array (EURECA) is a planned dark matter search experiment using cryogenic detectors and an absorber mass of up to 1 tonne. The project will be built in the Modane Underground Laboratory and will bring together researchers working on the CRESST and EDELWEISS experiments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EDELWEISS</span>

EDELWEISS is a dark matter search experiment located at the Modane Underground Laboratory in France. The experiment uses cryogenic detectors, measuring both the phonon and ionization signals produced by particle interactions in germanium crystals. This technique allows nuclear recoils events to be distinguished from electron recoil events.

Manfred Lindner is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. He conducts basic research in particle and astro-particle physics.

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources in order to exclude the radioactive isotope 39
Ar, which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZEPLIN-III</span> 2006–2011 dark matter experiment in England

The ZEPLIN-III dark matter experiment attempted to detect galactic WIMPs using a 12 kg liquid xenon target. It operated from 2006 to 2011 at the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Loftus, North Yorkshire. This was the last in a series of xenon-based experiments in the ZEPLIN programme pursued originally by the UK Dark Matter Collaboration (UKDMC). The ZEPLIN-III project was led by Imperial College London and also included the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Edinburgh in the UK, as well as LIP-Coimbra in Portugal and ITEP-Moscow in Russia. It ruled out cross-sections for elastic scattering of WIMPs off nucleons above 3.9 × 10−8 pb from the two science runs conducted at Boulby.

The Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector, or PandaX, is a dark matter detection experiment at China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China. The experiment occupies the deepest underground laboratory in the world, and is among the largest of its kind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elena Aprile</span> Italian experimental particle physicist

Elena Aprile is an Italian-American experimental particle physicist. She has been a professor of physics at Columbia University since 1986. She is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter Experiment. Aprile is well known for her work with noble liquid detectors and for her contributions to particle astrophysics in the search for dark matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LZ experiment</span> Experiment in South Dakota, United States

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment is a next-generation dark matter direct detection experiment hoping to observe weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) scatters on nuclei. It was formed in 2012 by combining the LUX and ZEPLIN groups. It is currently a collaboration of 30 institutes in the US, UK, Portugal and South Korea. The experiment is located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota, and is managed by the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

The CoGeNT experiment has searched for dark matter. It uses a single germanium crystal as a cryogenic detector for WIMP particles. CoGeNT has operated in the Soudan Underground Laboratory since 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David B. Cline</span> American particle physicist

]

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ANAIS-112</span> Spanish dark matter direct detection experiment

ANAIS is a dark matter direct detection experiment located at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory (LSC), in Spain, operated by a team of researchers of the CAPA at the University of Zaragoza.

Direct detection of dark matter is the science of attempting to directly measure dark matter collisions in Earth-based experiments. Modern astrophysical measurements, such as from the Cosmic Microwave Background, strongly indicate that 85% of the matter content of the universe is unaccounted for. Although the existence of dark matter is widely believed, what form it takes or its precise properties has never been determined. There are three main avenues of research to detect dark matter: attempts to make dark matter in accelerators, indirect detection of dark matter annihilation, and direct detection of dark matter in terrestrial labs. The founding principle of direct dark matter detection is that since dark matter is known to exist in the local universe, as the Earth, Solar System, and the Milky Way Galaxy carve out a path through the universe they must intercept dark matter, regardless of what form it takes.

Daniel S. Akerib is an American particle physicist and astrophysicist. He was elected in 2008 a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

References

  1. ↑ "Membership of the Scientific Policy Committee | CERN Council". council.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 "CV on website of the institute of physics, University of Zurich". University of Zurich. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
  3. ↑ "Conversation with our Authors, Laura Baudis". Springer Nature. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
  4. ↑ "Es wäre toll, wenn ich diese Teilchen spüren könnte". Der Bund (in German). 26 February 2020.
  5. ↑ AG, Der Bund, Tamedia Espace. "Es wäre toll, wenn ich diese Teilchen spüren könnte". Der Bund (Switzerland, German Language) (in German). ISSN   0774-6156 . Retrieved 5 March 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ L. Baudis, J. Hellmig, G. Heusser, H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, B. Majorovits, Y. Ramachers,and H. Strecker, "Direct detection of WIMPs with the HDMS-experiment and new WI,MP-l,iitsthe Heiderg–Mos experiment", Physics Reports,Volume 307, Issues 1-4, 291-295 (1998), doi : 10.1016/S0370-1573(98)00064-7
  7. 1 2 L. Baudis, J. Hellmig, H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, Y. Ramachers, H. Strecker, "Dark matter search with the HDMS-experiment and the GENIUS project", Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements,Volume 70, Issues 1-3, 106-110 (1999), doi : 10.1016/S0920-5632(98)00397-1
  8. ↑ Aprile, E.; Giboni, K.L.; Majewski, P.; Ni, K.; Yamashita, M.; Gaitskell, R.; Sorensen, P.; DeViveiros, L.; Baudis, L.; Bernstein, A.; Hagmann, C. (2005). "The XENON dark matter search experiment". New Astronomy Reviews. 49 (2–6): 289–295. arXiv: astro-ph/0407575 . Bibcode:2005NewAR..49..289A. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.254.2916 . doi:10.1016/j.newar.2005.01.035. S2CID   18045108.
  9. ↑ XENON Collaboration; Aprile, E.; Agostini, F.; Alfonsi, M.; Arazi, L.; Arisaka, K.; Arneodo, F.; Auger, M.; Balan, C.; Barrow, P.; Baudis, L. (2015). "Lowering the radioactivity of the photomultiplier tubes for the XENON1T dark matter experiment". The European Physical Journal C. 75 (11): 546. arXiv: 1503.07698 . Bibcode:2015EPJC...75..546A. doi: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3657-5 . ISSN   1434-6044.
  10. ↑ Schumann, Marc; Baudis, Laura; Bütikofer, Lukas; Kish, Alexander; Selvi, Marco (8 October 2015). "Dark matter sensitivity of multi-ton liquid xenon detectors" (PDF). Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2015 (10): 016. arXiv: 1506.08309 . Bibcode:2015JCAP...10..016S. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2015/10/016. ISSN   1475-7516. S2CID   44577629.
  11. ↑ Aprile, Elena; Baudis, Laura (2009). "Status and Sensitivity Projections for the XENON100 Dark Matter Experiment". Proceedings of Identification of dark matter 2008 — PoS(idm2008). p. 018. arXiv: 0902.4253 . doi: 10.22323/1.064.0018 .
  12. ↑ Sorenson, P Angle, J Aprile, E Arneodo, F Baudis, L Bernstein, A Bolozdynya, A Brusov, P Ferella, A D Fernandes, L M P Fiorucci, S Gaitskell, R J Giboni, K L Gomez, R Hasty, R Kastens, L Kwong, J Lopes, J A M Madden, N Monzani, M E Ni, K Oberlack, U Orboeck, J Plante, G Santorelli, R dos Santos, J M F Shagin, P Shutt, T Schulte, S Winant, C Yamashita, M. Lowering the low-energy threshold of xenon detectors. SISSA. OCLC   1030044693.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ Baudis, Laura; the DARWIN consortium (30 July 2012). "DARWIN dark matter WIMP search with noble liquids". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 375 (1): 012028. arXiv: 1012.4764 . Bibcode:2012JPhCS.375a2028B. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/375/1/012028. ISSN   1742-6596. S2CID   30885844.
  14. ↑ DARWIN Collaboration Aalbers, J Agostini, F Alfonsi, M et al Barrow, P Baudis, L Galloway, M James, A Kish, A Mayani, D Pakarha, P Piastra, F Wei, Y Wulf, J (2016). DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector. IOP Publishing. OCLC   1030048573.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ↑ Sánchez Sorondo, Marcelo; Zichichi, Antonino, eds. (2014). "Results from the XENON100 Dark Matter Search Experiment by Laura Baudis" (PDF). Subnuclear Physics: Past, Present and Future; Proceedings of the International Symposium, held 30 October - 2 November 2011, held in Vatican City. Scripta Varia, volume 119. Pontifical Academy of Sciences. pp. 315–327.
  16. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#0542066 - CAREER: Search for Dark Matter and Mentoring Female Physics Students". nsf.gov. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  17. ↑ "Universität Zürich: Jahresbericht 2014" (PDF). Universität Zürich.
  18. ↑ "APS Fellow Archive". www.aps.org. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  19. 1 2 "13 Millionen Euro Fördergelder für fünf UZH-Forschende". www.media.uzh.ch (in German). Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  20. ↑ "ERC Advanced Grants 2016" (PDF). European Research Council.
  21. ↑ "Miller Institute Winter Newsletter 2019" (PDF). Miller Institute.
  22. ↑ "The Charpak-Ritz Prize 2022 awarded to Laura Baudis". Société Française de Physique.
  23. ↑ "SPC - Composition as from January 2020 | CERN Council". council.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  24. ↑ "The European Physical Journal C (EPJ C)". epjc.epj.org. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  25. ↑ "Members of the International Advisory Board of KCETA" (PDF). KCETA.
  26. ↑ "APPEC elect new SAC Chair and Vice-chair » APPEC". 27 June 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  27. ↑ "Science Week General Assembly 2013" (PDF). Indico.
  28. ↑ "DARWIN - Dark Matter WIMP Search With Liquid Xenon". darwin.physik.uzh.ch. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  29. ↑ "GERDA Contacts and Organigram". www.mpi-hd.mpg.de. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
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