Michael Litke will conduct thesis research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa graduate student Michael Litke has been awarded a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Fellowship to support his PhD thesis research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Litke is a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he works with Professor Sven Vahsen.
Litke’s research focuses on developing new detectors that can measure the directions of neutral particles, including neutrons, neutrinos, and potential dark matter particles. His SCGSR Fellowship will support a research visit to Oak Ridge, where he will carry out directional neutron measurements using detectors developed by the Vahsen group.
These measurements will help assess the feasibility of a future neutrino experiment proposed in a recent preprint by theoretical physicist Ciaran O’Hare of the University of Sydney, Litke, Vahsen, and collaborators. The project connects detector development at UH Mānoa with emerging ideas in neutrino physics and particle detection.
More information about research in the Vahsen group is available on the group’s website.
