I have recently entered the exciting subfield of direct searches for Dark Matter.  Working with the Priceton Particle Astrophysics group (see Profs. Calaprice and Galbiati) and others, I am developing new devices to detect the very-low-energy nuclear recoils from the elastic scattering of "Weakly Interacting Massive Particles" (WIMPs), a promising model for the Dark Matter.  We are focused on liquid argon as a detection medium, collecting the scintillation light and ionization created by the recoiling nuclei, a "two-phase TPC" configuration.  We are currently building prototypes and operating them in the basement of Jadwin Hall, but actual experiments must be operated deep underground in laboratories like the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), which the National Science Foundation proposes to build in the Homestake Mine in South Dakota.

We are now building a prototype TPC that will have an active mass of 10 kg, which we call the "20-kg detector" because it sounds better. This will be operational in early 2010.  It is a prototype for the DarkSide-50 project, a 50-kg detector to be deployed underground for a WIMP search.  See the DarkSide-50 proposal here.  We are also working on the design of a succession of larger detectors under the DarkSide/MAX brand.  This should culminate in the deployment of a multi-ton liquid argon detector.

My previous project was the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Experiment, MiniBooNE. This was an investigation of neutrino oscillations in the region of mass-difference and mixing angle where the LSND experiment had seen some evidence for oscillations. "MiniBooNE" is a 40-ft-diameter tank of mineral oil, instrumented with photomultiplier tubes and positioned 500 m from the 1-GeV neutrino source. The Princeton group led the design and construction of this detector in 2001. You can see how the construction proceeded here.

In 2007, we reported our first oscillation results (see the reference below), which saw no evidence for the LSND effect. The published analysis was the one developed by the Princeton group. In this analysis, there was an excess of electron-like events at low energies for which there is still no convincing explanation.  The experiment is still running, but the Princeton group is no longer actively involved.

• "A Search for Electron Neutrino Appearance at the $\Delta m^2 \sim 1$ eV$^2$ Scale", A. A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al., arXiv:0704.1500 [hep-ex], Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 231801 (2007).
• "The MiniBooNE Detector", A.A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al., arXiv:0806.4201 [hep-ex], Nucl. Instr. Meth. A599 (2009) 28-4.