Research News

Vitelli honored for his innovative research reimagining possibilities of unconventional materials.

Award by Berlin-based Falling Walls Foundation honors high-risk, multi-field leap across quantum, biology, and chemistry.

Half a century ago, scientists at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute helped invent a new way to study the universe: by treating the Big Bang itself as a laboratory to explore nature at energy scales unreachable on earth. This fall, nine of the researchers who carry that legacy forward will share what those fifty years have uncovered — from the invisible matter holding galaxies together to the gravitational ripples of colliding black holes.

The series of free public talks by UChicago scientists, “The Compton Lectures: 50 Years of Discovery,” run every Saturday from Oct. 3 through Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. in the Kersten Physics Teaching Center.

In its hunt for dark matter, the XENONnT experiment has detected the rare, feeble glow of neutrinos smacking into electrons.

Breakthrough from a team led by Jacob Covey, associate professor in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Department of Physics, turns helium-3’s low mass into a quantum resource.

At the national laboratory, the first light bulbs lit by nuclear power have given way to supercomputers, quantum research and nanoscale engineering.

As Fermilab commemorates 70 years since the discovery of the neutrino at the Savannah River Site in the United States, the lab also celebrates its multiple generations of pioneering neutrino research. Today, Fermilab is building the next era of neutrino discovery through the development of the world-leading Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

W. M. Keck Foundation awarded UChicago $1.3M for the project, “Non-Reciprocal Matter,” led by Heinrich Jaeger, the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the College.

How UChicago physicists delayed the formation of viscous fingers between fluids.

The largest neutrino experiment in the United States was named the Project of the Year by the Underground Construction Association for completing a significant and challenging underground construction project with little or no issues.

Dark matter is a substance that has gravity—it holds galaxies together—but cannot be directly seen with any instrument yet created. Scientists are trying many different approaches to find the nature of this mysterious substance.

Ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves may be the key to solving the Hubble tension — one of the biggest nagging problems in physics.

In this spring’s Compton Lectures, Keith McBride, a UChicago postdoctoral researcher, will illuminate how astroparticles can answer questions about the farthest reaches of our universe as well as be harnessed as practical tools to understand our earth. The free public talks run every Saturday from March 28 through May 16 at 11 AM.

New infrared light sources mark 100-fold efficiency boost, could improve broad range of sensors, technology.

Congratulations to early-career scholars Aloni Cohen (Computer Science and DSI), Anna Wuttig (Chemistry), and Zoe Yan (Physics), recognized for their potential to make substantial contributions to their fields.

Advance in robot locomotion by UChicago, University of Amsterdam researchers could offer new avenues for design.

Scientists from UChicago, Harvard, and Yale propose a self-organizing model of connectivity that applies across a wide range of organisms and potentially other types of networks as well.

Story by Matt Wood, Assistant Director of Communications, Biological Sciences Division 

Citation: "For the development of techniques expanding the low-energy reach of new particle detector technologies, with applications in neutrino physics, dark matter searches, and the study of charged-lepton flavor violating modes of muon decay."

Professor Abigail Vieregg receives Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative Award

Professor Marcela Carena was Named A 2022 DOE Distinguished Scientist

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced the first successful demonstration of a new technique that improves particle beams. The team, in collaboration with UChicago, published its findings in a recent edition of Nature.

Grace Chesmore, a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Physics, and Celeste Keith, a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, will conduct research at Fermi National Laboratory as part of the Department of Energy's Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program.

Award-winning film presentation by Savannah Gowen demonstrates how training materials can be used to induce desired properties.

University of Chicago researchers at Chin Lab discovered how to create and manipulate a quantum phenomenon known as a "domain wall" - shown in this image as the lighter line between two groups of atoms. (Image adapted and color added from experiment data.)

Nine University of Chicago researchers, including the Physics Department's Prof. Edward Blucher, were named 2021 fellows of the AAAS for their distinguished contributions to the sciences.

Having solved a central mystery about the “twirliness” of tornadoes and other types of vortices, William Irvine has set his sights on turbulence, the white whale of classical physics.

The Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize recognizes research excellence and exceptional promise in areas related to CCAPP initiatives. Two recipients are hosted by CCAPP for a week, during which they give a Price Prize seminar on their research, establish long-term collaborative relationships, and receive a $2,000 honorarium.
Kaeli Hughes' research focuses on the radio detection of astrophysical neutrinos above 10 PeV.

Grandi in one of the final phases of XENONnT Time Projection Chamber assembly. The next generation detector is expected to feature an active volume from 5 to 10 times larger.

Researchers have big ideas for the potential of quantum technology which all depend on a major technological feat: being able to build and control systems of quantum particles, which are among the smallest objects in the universe.
That goal is now a step closer with the publication of a new method by University of Chicago scientists. Published April 28 in Nature, the paper shows how to bring multiple molecules at once into a single quantum state.

Scientists planning future particle accelerators and synchrotron light sources strive for tighter, more powerful electron beams. But as beams get narrower, it becomes harder to measure important properties. Now, Ihar Lobach of the University of Chicago and colleagues have demonstrated a new way to measure a beam’s vertical emittance more precisely than existing methods.

See also from Fermilab

Michel Fruchart has been named one of four recipients of the 2020-2021 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding postdoctoral researchers. He was nominated by his supervisor, Vincenzo Vitelli, and will be recieve a $10,000 prize.

A team of researchers at the University of Chicago recently embarked on the search of a lifetime—or rather, a search for the lifetime of long-lived supersymmetric particles, proposed particles that could explain quirks of the universe.

The XENON1T detector, tucked into an Italian mountainside to search for signs of a mysterious substance in the universe called dark matter, has picked up a new bump in the data that cannot be explained by current models.
On June 17, Evan Shockley, graduate student in the group of Professor Grandi, presented the results of a new analysis of XENON1T data searching for anomalies in the electron recoil channels.

Professor Kim has been named the 2019 Scientist of the Year jointly by the Korean Scientists and Engineers Association (US) and the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (Korea). Congratulations!

The Michelson Center for Physics

Professor Parker looks back over the first year of the Parker Solar Probe mission.

A new quasi-particle partly made of light

Professor Awschalom on quantum technology

Professor Chin's group performs an experiment to simulate Unruh radiation

Professor Awschalom discussed the new Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Professor Irvine's work featured by Physics Girl

Professor Wang discusses his new proposal for Searching for Dark Matter.

Professor Grandi's Xenon 1 Ton collaboration observes the decay of Xe-124.

Professor Chin's group make first observation of mediated interactions with cold atoms

Professor Daniel Holz on gravity waves and the universe.

Quantum dots improve infrared camera technology

Professor Awschalom's group couple sound waves and spins to get quantum states to communicate

Professor Jaeger's lab defies gravity with sound waves.

PIP-II facility for DUNE

This research, led by graduate student Lei Feng, showed a new correlation pattern in the k space that emerge from quantum fluctuations in a uniform Bose condensate. They amplified the fluctuations parametrically which gave rise to cascaded scatterings that ejected atoms in all directions. Using pattern recognition, they observed the hidden correlation.

Professor Dave Schmitz comments on the upcoming neutrino experiment.