$ 570K scholarship to study scarce particles, dark matter

University of Hawaiʻi

A university of Hawaii to the Mānoa project to advance knowledge of the universe and understanding of its origin and dark matter, received a great boost from the National Science Foundation. The three-year grant of $ 568,586 will enhance the work of the Cosmic-Ray Antinuclei (CRA) group to help the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02) experiment at the International Space Station.

Under the leadership of Associate Professor of the Department of Physics and Astronomy Philip von Doetinchem, the project will use measurements of cosmic ray antinuclei (anti-equivalent of regular nuclei of atoms) to identify the nature of dark matter and other new astrophysical phenomena, and could be used with other cosmic ray species to understand the production and propagation of cosmic rays in the galaxy.

The work will improve understanding of antinucleus formation and interactions, using existing data from AMS-02 and the results of the fixed target experiment SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment (NA61 / SHINE) at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research ).

Future of cosmic ray antinuclei

Doetinchem and other researchers recently published an article in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, detailing current advances in the study of cosmic ray antinuclei and its breakthrough in physics.

Doetinchem noted that researchers rely on messengers to learn about the galaxy; the most common is starlight. However, their approach uses heavier charged particles, also called cosmic rays, which undergo different interactions on their way to Earth than light.

In particular, researchers are focusing on very rare cosmic antinuclei. Antinuclei have been artificially produced on the ground in particle physics experiments, but have not been observed in space. The advantage of studying these scarce particles is that they allow researchers to study very rare production processes and one such process could be the annihilation of dark matter. Understanding dark matter is one of the most important questions in physics because it is about five times more abundant than normal matter, but not much more is known about its nature at this time.

More on UH Mānoa’s CRA group

Along with its work to assist AMS-02, Doetinchem’s CRA group is involved in many other activities to advance using cosmic ray antinuclei as dark matter messengers. Doetinchem is the project scientist for the new general antiparticle spectrometer (GAPS). This NASA experiment will be launched in a series of long-duration high-altitude balloon flights over Antarctica in search of low-energy cosmic ray antinuclei starting in 2022. UH Mānoa undergraduate student Layne Fujioka has developed an app of augmented reality, funded by UROP, which illustrates how the GAPS experiment works.

The group is also actively using Mana, UH’s High-Performance Computing Cluster, to simulate antinucleus formation and interactions with Earth’s atmosphere and geomagnetic field. For example, a study by graduate student Anirvan Shukla used this facility for thousands of years of processing to study antinucleus formation, which was recently published in Physical Review D.