Doug will be remembered as a pioneer of experimental relativistic heavy-ion collisions, having worked on many key early experiments, including HISS at the Bevalac and NA-36 at CERN, before retiring in 1993. He had a particular interest in strangeness production in these collisions, having made early measurements of lambda production in sulfur-sulfur and sulfur-silver collisions. After retirement, Doug returned to the lab part-time, where he helped out with the construction of the STAR time projection chamber.
First light with the Eos Hybrid Neutrino Detector
In March, the Eos collaboration hit a major milestone in their development of a novel “hybrid” neutrino detector which simultaneously leverages both Cherenkov and scintillation signatures.
Eos is a 3.5-meter tall, 3-meter wide cylinder, ultimately to be filled with water and an organic scintillator surrounded by highly sensitive Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs). By combining Cherenkov and scintillation emission the detector has the potential to provide greater sensitivity and resolution than conventional detectors. These improvements could be a game-changer for future neutrino physics experiments while also providing new capabilities for nuclear non-proliferation.
On the 8th March 2024 the detector saw its first light. By injecting blue LED flashes into Eos using its light injection calibration system, the PMTs were able to observe pulses in the single photon regime. This moment represented the culmination of effort from the entire collaboration, demonstrating the integration of many critical subcomponents of this next-generation neutrino detector.
This event proved to be ideally timed, with the results coming just weeks before the Eos Collaboration Meeting which ran from the 21st to 22nd March allowing the results of this landmark to be presented to the entire team. The observation indicates that the detector is functioning as expected, and will now imminently move into the next stage of its development – filling with water.
The water fill will provide an essential period for the Eos team to fully understand the detector performance, test its modeling, and scrutinize its reconstruction techniques through the deployment of an array of calibration sources. At this point, the team will be ready to inject Water based Liquid Scintillator into Eos’ central acrylic volume. Through the further deployment of radioactive sources, the Eos collaboration will be able to fully understand this novel neutrino detection medium. Eos aims to demonstrate the capabilities that the latest fast photosensors, combined with high photocathode coverage, and the use of dichroicons in spectral photon sorting will have in separating Cherenkov and scintillation emission from WbLS. In doing this, Eos hopes to illustrate the advantages of this “hybrid” detection for many future neutrino applications. This will be an exciting moment: Eos’ performance this year can demonstrate a bright future for these novel techniques. The scope of possibilities are vast, from using Eos itself in nuclear nonproliferation experimentation to scaling up the technology to experiments such as the proposed Theia to apply these techniques in the search for the fundamental nature of neutrinos.
The Eos collaboration is led by NSD Faculty Scientist Gabriel Orebi Gann
Figure 1: Preliminary Eos event display of a commissioning run. Here light was injected between columns 16 and 17 of the side PMTs. The resulting detected light can clearly be seen by the PMT array on the opposite side of the detector.
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Fragments
In November, NSD held a two-day offsite retreat which brought together the whole division to discuss the goals of the scientific programs and the division’s people stewardship efforts. The agenda included presentations on scientific activities and goals and interactive discussion sessions on topics including career development and the way we work.
In October, NSD hosted the 11th annual Nuclear Science Day for Scouts. The event provides an opportunity for scouts to earn an event badge and learn about nuclear science through a series of hands-on activities. In the image on the right, NSD Postdoctoral Researcher Emil Rofors describes various radiation detectors on display at the “Detector Expo” station. A description of this year’s event can be found in this article.
Several NSD staff members and affiliates attended the Fall Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics which was held in Hawaii in late November. Presentations delivered by NSD included topics such as the path to element 120 (Larry Phair), reinforcement learning for ion source control and optimization (Yue Shi Lai), and water coordination chemistry of Nobelium and Lawrencium (Mallory McCarthy).
Staff and students from the Applied Nuclear Physics (ANP) program attended the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference in Vancouver in November. The meeting is the largest annual radiation instrumentation conference. Members of ANP and affiliated graduate students delivered a total of 14 presentations, and served as session chairs and topic conveners.
At the conference, ANP Postdoctoral Researcher Lei Pan was recognized with an award for the best paper published in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science in 2023 for his article entitled Performance of Perovskite CsPbBr3 Single Crystal Detector for Gamma-Ray Detection.
Andre Walker Loud, a Staff Scientist in the Nuclear Theory Program was recently elected a 2023 APS Fellow. He was recognized for his “definitive contributions to fundamental symmetries in nucleons and nuclei, utilizing lattice QCD and Effective Field Theory, including the high-precision computation of the nucleon axial coupling.” Congratulations, Andre!
NSD Staff Scientist Brian Quiter and Faculty Scientist Lee Bernstein received 2023 Berkeley Lab Director’s Awards. Lee received a Tech Transfer award for supporting the “commercialization of his invention, a production method for a groundbreaking but rare cancer drug called AC-225”, and Brian is a member of the Mentoring@LBNL team, which won the IDEA Award for Mentorship “for building the critical foundations of a complex mentoring ecosystem that fulfills different employee needs around mentorship while also modeling the value of team science and cross-Lab collaboration over a 3 year period.” Congratulations Brian and Lee!
Larry Phair, Head of NSD’s 88” Cyclotron Program recently reached 30 years of service. Congratulations to Larry on this major milestone!
NSD welcomes new hires Marilena Lykiardopoulou (Postdoctoral Researcher), Antoine Armatol (Postdoctoral Researcher), and Tobin Dean Kramazs (Mechanical Engineering Associate).
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability Moments
Recognizing and Celebrating Neurodiversity at the Lab
We’re happy to highlight a new initiative in our lab community – the Neurodiversity Working Group (NWG), part of the AllAccess Employee Resource Group (ERG). This group is committed to enhancing our understanding of neurodiversity, fostering a supportive network for neurodivergent lab employees, and advocating for inclusive policies that aid in the hiring and retention of neurodivergent individuals.
Understanding Neurodiversity
Neurodiversity acknowledges the natural diversity of human brains, recognizing the value of cognitive differences. This terminology encompasses every brain’s differences, and also gives space to describe the differences in the brains of “neurodivergent” people. Neurodivergence describes specifically the differences in the brains of individuals with neurodivergent conditions such as autism, ADHD, learning disorders, OCD, and others. Embracing neurodiversity means valuing the unique perspectives and problem-solving approaches of neurodivergent individuals, while understanding their experiences can be largely shaped by their neurotype.
NWG’s Formation and Leadership
The NWG, led by Hannah Parrilla (NSD), Melissa Romanus (NERSC), Hannah Ross (NERSC), and Jean Sexton (CCSE), emerged from a collective effort to support neurodiversity. These leaders aim to represent the neurodiverse makeup of our lab and lead the way in celebrating neurodiversity.
Goals and Initiatives
The NWG is focused on three main goals:
- Celebrating Neurodiversity: Raising awareness about neurodivergent experiences and hosting educational events to foster an inclusive, understanding workplace.
- Building a Supportive Network: Creating a community for neurodivergent lab employees to share experiences, access resources, and support personal and professional development.
- Influencing Policy: Advocating for inclusive hiring practices and policies that support the career advancement of neurodivergent staff.
Looking Ahead
The establishment of the NWG is a progressive step towards recognizing the contributions of neurodivergent individuals in science. It aims to cultivate a diverse and inclusive culture that celebrates the unique skills and perspectives of all members.
We invite everyone to engage with the NWG, participate in their initiatives, and support their mission to make our division a leader in embracing neurodiversity in science.
Figure 1: A logo to celebrate the Neurodiversity Working Group.
Luminary Cards
To recognize their efforts in the area(s) of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability, the following people received a Luminary Card: Larry Phair
Graphene Amplifier & Sensor Development
In the early development of the LEGEND-200 low-noise readout electronics (cf. July 2023 NSD newsletter), researchers in the NSD Neutrinos Program realized a supply issue of the junction field-effect transistors (JFETs) implemented in the design. The vendor that manufactured these low-noise devices has stopped making them, as have many of their competitors. NSD Senior Scientist Alan Poon’s group then embarked on a journey to find an alternative to these high-quality devices. In the summer of 2021, a Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) student, Jeremy Fleishhacker, from Carleton College, MN, was tasked with simulating the electronic response of a graphene field-effect transistor (GFET). His early findings showed that GFETs could be a viable alternative to JFETs.
This past summer, another SULI student, Phoebe Andromeda, from Oregon State University, joined the research team to investigate the actual device performance; in particular, the variation of electronic performance for graphene of different sizes, which acts as the “channel,” between the drain and the source of the GFET. They also measured the electronic characteristics at room and liquid nitrogen temperatures. Working with electronics in cryogens was a highlight of Andromeda’s summer term, as “running electrical tests on the GFETs was the culmination of all the hard work earlier in the internship.”
During the early development of this project, Marcos Turquetti, a staff engineer from the Lab’s Engineering Division, saw an increase in noise when he exposed the GFET device to light in the laboratory. He has since verified that GFETs are indeed sensitive to optical light. Lisa Schlüter, a postdoctoral fellow in the Neutrino Program since summer 2023, is now investigating the spectral response of GFETs over a broader wavelength spectrum, exploiting its utilities in other photo-sensing applications.
The team is exploring other practical uses of GFETs. For example, Lucas Brouwer of the Lab’s Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics (ATAP) Division is developing a magnetic sensor that exploits graphene’s high charge mobility. The goal is to develop a magnetosensor with nano-Tesla sensitivity for superconducting magnets operating at liquid helium temperature.
In 2022, the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Physics funded this GFET development work as a two-year project under its Micro-electronics Initiative.
Figure 1. Layout of a Graphene FET (Image from Graphenea GFET-S31 datasheet).
Figure 2: SULI undergraduate Phoebe Andromeda presenting their GFET work at the Conference Experience for Undergraduates (CEU) poster session in Hawaii in November 2023. Andromeda summed up their poster presentation nicely: “It went exceedingly well. I spoke to many people in the nuclear science community during my presentation who were very interested in my research as it was new and cutting edge!”
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