| Detwiler fully immersed in DUSEL project, Sanford Lab scientific collaboration |
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| Written by Wendy Pitlick |
| Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
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LEAD — Dr. Kevin Lesko said that Jason Detwiler is one of the best post doctoral students he has had in 15 years. Between his work with the DUSEL team, his heavy involvement in one of the first experiments to be deployed in the Sanford Lab, and other physics experiments, 32-year-old Jason Detwiler has completely immersed himself in the realm of underground research.
Detwiler wears many hats in the physics community as he works side-by-side with brilliant minds to uncover some of the best kept secrets of the universe. On the DUSEL team, Detwiler serves as the “go-between” contact for DUSEL project managers and the proposed facility’s scientist users, making sure that scientific collaborations know what the DUSEL team needs from them for the proposal to build a federally funded underground laboratory in Lead. Additionally, he serves with the Majorana collaboration — a double beta decay neutrino experiment that is expected to deploy at the 4,850-foot level of the Sanford Lab next year. Further, Detwiler is also involved in a neutrino experiment at Kam Lab in Japan, and he just wrapped up a neutrino experiment at SNO Lab in Canada. The Majorana experiment, Detwiler said, essentially seeks to discover how the universe was created by testing a theory that neutrinos are their own antiparticle. Most particles, such as electrons, have an anti-particle. When the two come together they annihilate each other, he said. Because neutrinos have a neutral charge, unlike the electron and anti-electrons, which have positive and negative charge respectively, scientists have long thought neutrinos are their own antiparticle. If that is the case, the neutrino would be the only known particle of its kind to have this quality. “If a neutrino is its own antiparticle there is a chance that it was involved in the early universe during the big bang,” Detwiler said. “Matter and antimatter usually get created simultaneously, and when they annihilate each other they annihilate simultaneously. Somehow after the big bang ended we were left with just normal matter. Something in the early universe led to the excess of matter over antimatter. We in essence owe our existence to whatever that process was, otherwise all the matter would have annihilated with antimatter and nothing (would be here). We call that matter-antimatter asymmetry. The neutrino, if it is its own antiparticle, may be involved in this antimatter-matter asymmetry. Learning about this property about the neutrino might help us understand this big question about the universe. Essentially, where we came from.” Since he has worked on international scientific collaborations and in labs around the world, Detwiler said he has witnessed the great need for an underground laboratory in the United States. While underground labs in Gran Sasso, Italy, and in Sudbury, Canada, are deep enough to avoid the cosmic rays that interfere with neutrino and dark matter experiments, they are largely oversubscribed, meaning that there can be very long waiting periods before new experiments are deployed. The KAM Lab in Japan, he said, is also heavily used, but at 3,000 feet deep it is not far enough away from cosmic rays. With development in its early stages, the DUSEL would afford scientists the space and the opportunity to conduct the experiments that they would otherwise have to wait several years for. Additionally, the vast space underground makes the former Homestake gold mine very user friendly as scientists continually plan experiments to study universal phenomena. Further, Detwiler said, just the idea of having an underground laboratory in the United States will make underground research easier for American scientists. “For American scientists it is very exciting for us to have the possibility to have one of these big underground labs in our own country,” Detwiler said. “We won’t have to go to other countries all the time. It’s exciting to travel, but it’s also very tiring, it is a major budgetary drain and also an inconvenience. Majorana is an international collaboration, but we are mostly American. So when Homestake opened up it became a very nice option for us. Now, at this point SNO Lab is becoming over subscribed, so even if we wanted to reconsider our decision (to locate in the Sanford Lab) we probably wouldn’t be able to because there are so many experiments and it is almost full there. That just goes to show how much desire there is in the scientific community to have space underground to do these kinds of experiments. We’re itching to get in there.” Detwiler said he feels very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with such major scientific collaborations. Having originally started his undergraduate career as an engineering major, Detwiler was forced to take physics classes. He found that he enjoyed those classes, and when he took advantage of an opportunity to study condensed matter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he decided he wanted to make physics his career. Those decisions are all about the opportunities that are presented in life, Detwiler said, and that’s why he is happy the DUSEL will help open South Dakota students’ eyes to the exciting world of physics. “What I hope is that’s what Homestake will bring to the people of this area,” he said. “Just having the opportunity to come here and get involved in some research, I think giving young people that opportunity … some fraction of students are going to be very excited about that. That’s my hope for the people of this area.” |
