Queen's 2015 Nobel Prize in PhysicsAPPLICATION DEADLINE: Wednesday February 5th, 2025
The Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy offers a combined program of a BScH/MSc (Physics). This program offers an opportunity for students to carry out summer research between their 3rd and 4th years, then, in the 4th year of their Honours program (Physics) to take up to 2 courses in Physics at the graduate level which would then allow these students to enter the graduate program with advanced standing. Research begun as an undergraduate could be carried forward as a foundation for the graduate thesis, which would create an opportunity for exceptional students to complete the graduate degree within 4 terms.
KDK+ is a new experiment measuring a rare decay of 40K with openings for accelerated masters students to work on hardware, simulations and analysis. Contact: Philippe Di Stefano (distefan@queensu.ca, https://www.queensu.ca/academia/di-stefano/)
DEAP and DarkSide are large-scale liquid argon experiments that use the unique properties of liquid argon scintillation to search for extremely rare dark matter interactions. DEAP is based at SNOLAB and has already acquired 3 years’ worth of data. DarkSide is a next-generation experiment, and will be the first direct dark matter experiment to fully instrument the detector with novel quantum sensors called Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). Opportunities available to students include analysis of DEAP data as well as assistance with data-taking, and simulating and testing the data acquisition system for DarkSide in conjunction with colleagues at TRIUMF. There is also the opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience, using a small cryostat facility in our lab at Queen’s to measure various properties of different detector materials used by DEAP and DarkSide. Contact: Fred Schuckman (fgs@queensu.ca)
Laboratory for Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (LEMMA)studies high-energy particles in the Universe. Our Universe harbours an enormous number of objects capable of accelerating charged particles to energies much higher than anything that can be obtained by human-made accelerators. LEMMA aims to identify these extreme accelerators in our Universe by combining the knowledge gained from observations of many different particle messengers: cosmic rays, high-energy gamma rays, and high-energy neutrinos. Webpage: https://www.queensu.ca/physics/lemma/
LEMMA Research opportunities:
HELIX (High Energy Light Isotope eXperiment): HELIX is a NASA-funded balloon experiment. The payload is designed to measure the fluxes of cosmic ray isotopes, which will provide unique data to study the propagation of cosmic rays in our Galaxy. HELIX has a successful flight in 2024 summer. Research opportunities with HELIX will be focused on developing and evaluating the Monte Carlo detector simulation to study the flight data. This will require skills in computer programming to perform the data analysis and understanding of statistical analysis.
P-ONE (Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment) is a proposed high-energy neutrino telescope located off the coast of Vancouver Island. The scientific motivation of the experiment is to measure the high-energy neutrinos and search for the origin of these neutrinos. The first Demonstrator string is scheduled to be deployed in 2025. The research opportunity with P-ONE is to characterize the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), a sensitive photon detector, that will be assembled for the Demonstrator. This will involve setting up the apparatus for various tests, building an automated testing environment, testing hundreds of PMTs, and data analysis. Depending on the progress, the research may include the high-energy neutrino telescope simulation to study the properties of P-ONE with different string configurations. Contact: Nahee Park (nahee.park@queensu.ca