Elena Aprile

Elena Aprile
Born (1954-03-12)March 12, 1954
Milan, Italy
Alma mater University of Naples
University of Geneva
Known for XENON Dark Matter Search
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions Columbia University

Elena Aprile (born March 12, 1954 in Milan) is an Italian experimental particle physicist. She has been a professor of physics at Columbia University since 1986. She is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter Experiment. Aprile is well known for her work with noble liquid detectors and for her contributions to particle astrophysics in the search for dark matter.[1][2]

Education and Academic Career

Aprile studied physics at the University of Naples and completed her masters thesis at CERN under the supervision of Professor Carlo Rubbia.[3] After receiving her Laurea degree in 1978, she enrolled at the University of Geneva, from which she received her Ph.D. in physics in 1982. She moved to Harvard University in 1983 as a postdoctoral researcher in Carlo Rubbia's group. Aprile joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1986,[3] attaining her full professorship in 2001. From 2003 to 2009, Aprile served as co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory.

Research

Aprile is a specialist in noble liquid detectors and their application in particle physics and astrophysics.[4] She began working on liquid argon detectors as a graduate student at CERN, continuing her research as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. At Columbia she investigated the properties of noble liquids for radiation spectroscopy and imaging in astrophysics.[5] This work led to the realization of the first liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXeTPC) as a Compton telescope for MeV gamma rays.

From 1996 to 2001, Aprile was spokesperson of the NASA-sponsored Liquid Xenon Gamma-Ray Imaging Telescope (LXeGRIT) project, leading the first engineering test of the telescope in a near-space environment and subsequent science campaigns with long-duration balloon flights. LXeGRIT used a liquid xenon time projection chamber as a Compton telescope for imaging cosmic sources in the 0.15 to 10 MeV energy band. A total of about 36 hours of data were gathered from two long-duration flights in 1999 and 2000, at an average altitude of 39 km.[6][7][8]

Since 2001, Aprile’s research focus shifted to particle astrophysics, specifically to direct detection of dark matter with liquid xenon.[9] Aprile is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON dark matter experiment, which aims to discover WIMPs as they scatter off xenon atoms in massive yet ultra-low background[10] liquid xenon detectors operated deep underground.[11][12] Using a two-phase (liquid/gas) time projection chamber with active target mass ranging from tens to hundreds of kilograms, the XENON project has operated the XENON10[13] and XENON100 detectors at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, leading the field with the best sensitivity and the most competitive limits on WIMP-nucleon interaction cross-sections.[14][15][16][17] The XENON100 detector has been in operation since 2009, and the construction of the next-generation detector, XENON1T is near completion. With an active xenon mass larger than 3000 kg, XENON1T is expected to start operation by the end of 2015, to become the first experiment for dark matter detection at the tonne-scale. With the increased mass and hundred times lower background than XENON100, the new XENON1T will be able to probe dark matter interactions with ordinary matter at the 10−47 cm2 level for a particle mass of 50 GeV/c2.[18][19]

Awards

Aprile received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 1991 and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Award in 1999. She has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2000. In 2005 she received the medal of Ufficiale della Republica Italiana from the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.[20]. In 2019 she will receive the Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society (AAS).[21]

References

  1. ↑ Kolata, Gina (2011-06-06). "Women Atop Their Fields Dissect the Scientific Life". The New York Times. New York.
  2. ↑ http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/20-the-dark-hunter
  3. 1 2 Nathaniel Herzberg (2017-05-29). "Elena Aprile, la chasseuse de matière noire". LeMonde.fr (in French). Retrieved 2017-05-29.
  4. ↑ E. Aprile, A. E. Bolotnikov, A. I. Bolozdynya, T. Doke: Noble Gas Detectors. Wiley 2006.
  5. ↑ E. Aprile, T. Doke (2010-07). "Liquid xenon detectors for particle physics and astrophysics". Reviews of Modern Physics 82 (3): 2053–2097. RevModPhys.82.2053.
  6. ↑ E. Aprile et al, “Calibration and in-flight performance of the Compton telescope LXeGRIT”. New Astr. Rev. 48, 257 (2003).
  7. ↑ E. Aprile et al. "A New Light Readout System for the LXeGRIT Time Projection Chamber". IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. 50, 2003, 1303-1308. Columbia
  8. ↑ "LXeGRIT - A Liquid Xenon Gamma-Ray Imaging Telescope". 2002-10-22. Retrieved 2015-02-12.
  9. ↑ E. Aprile et al. "Simultaneous Measurement of Ionization and Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Xenon as Target for a Dark Matter Experiment". Physical Review Letters. Band 97, 2006, S. 081302
  10. ↑ E. Aprile; et al. (2011). "Study of the electromagnetic background in the XENON100 experiment". Phys. Rev. D. 83 (082001). arXiv:1101.3866. Bibcode:2011PhRvD..83h2001A. doi:10.1103/physrevd.83.082001.
  11. ↑ E. Aprile et al. “The XENON Dark Matter Search Experiment” in the Proceedings of the 6th UCLA Symposium on Sources and Detection of Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe. New Astr. Rev., 49, 289-295 (2005) (astro-ph/0407575).
  12. ↑ E. Aprile et al. (XENON Collaboration), “The XENON Dark Matter Experiment”, in Proceedings of the Dark2004 Conference (astro-ph/0502279).
  13. ↑ E. Aprile et al. "First Results from the XENON10 Dark Matter Experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory". Physical Review Letters. Band 100, 2008, S. 021303 Scopus
  14. ↑ E. Aprile et al. "The XENON100 Dark Matter Experiment." Astroparticle Physics. 35, 2012, S. 573–590. Arxiv
  15. ↑ E. Aprile et al. (XENON100 Collaboration), “First Dark Matter Results from the XENON 100 Experiment”. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 131302 (2010). Arxiv
  16. ↑ Overbye, Dennis (2011-04-14). "Particle Hunt Nets Almost Nothing; the Hunters Are Almost Thrilled". The New York Times. p. A18.
  17. ↑ E. Aprile; et al. (2014). "First Axion Results from the XENON100 Experiment". Phys. Rev. D. 90: 062009. arXiv:1404.1455. Bibcode:2014PhRvD..90f2009A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.90.062009.
  18. ↑ E. Aprile et al. "The XENON1T Dark Matter Search Experiment". Arxiv
  19. ↑ "Finding Beauty in the Search for Dark Matter". Studio 360. New York: Public Radio International. 2013-05-10.
  20. ↑ "Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana" (in Italian). 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-03-16.
  21. ↑ "Elena Aprile of XENON1T to Receive 2019 Berkeley Prize". 2018.
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