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Queen's Particle Astrophysics - Home

 
Particle Astrophysics Particle Astrophysics

The Queen's Particle Astrophysics group is a world leader in the field, and pursues questions that are found at the intersection of astrophysics and particle physics. Questions such as "What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?", "How have the properties of particles, like the neutrino, shaped the evolution of the universe?", "What are cosmic rays and what accelerates them?", "Are protons stable?" and "Are there additional space-time dimensions?".

Queen's Particle Astrophysics Group

The group has ten faculty members, eight experimentalists involved in several large projects based at SNOLAB, and two theorists. SNOLAB is the world's deepest underground laboratory for physics, built as an extension of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a solar neutrino detector. The SNO experiment has been a major success in physics and astrophysics. SNO discovered that solar neutrinos change flavour or "oscillate" as they propagate from their place of origin in the Sun to the Earth and SNO confirmed our understanding of the energy generation mechanism inside stars. Knowing that neutrinos oscillate implies that they have a finite mass, with implications for cosmology.

Exciting new experiments are planned that aim to detect dark matter particles, probe the fundamental properties of neutrinos, and detect geoneutrinos, the antineutrinos emitted by radioactivity in the Earth. Click on the Projects link to read more about the experiments or theory being developed here at Queen's:

SNOLAB -Deep underground laboratory for Particle Astrophysics
SNO -Measurement of solar neutrinos with Heavy Water
PICO -Dark matter search with Superheated Droplets
SNO+ -Low energy neutrinos (e.g. solar, geo, supernova) with Liquid Scintillator; Double Beta Decay (Neodymium)
DEAP -Dark Matter search with Liquid Argon
SuperCDMS -Dark matter search with Cryogenic Detectors
NEWS-G -New Experiments With Spheres
CUTE -Cryogenic detector test facility
QHEAT -Queen's High Energy and Astroparticle Theory Group

Many of our members also belong to the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Research Institute.

EXCITING NEWS:

POSITIONS AVAILABLE:


If you have questions or comments about the content of this website, please contact qusno@sno.phy.queensu.ca.