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On Saturday, March 9, a team of researchers, technicians, and contractors was on campus to move a powerful (15.3 Tesla) superconducting magnet from professor Sean Barrett’s lab in the basement of Sloane Physics Laboratory (SPL) to Yale Wright Laboratory (Wright Lab). The magnet, including parts installed to secure it for transport, weighed 12,000 lbs.
The magnet will be the heart of the new Axion Longitudinal Plasma Haloscope (ALPHA) experiment, which will be located at Wright Lab. ALPHA will extend the search for a hypothetical dark matter candidate–a very low-mass particle called the axion—to a higher mass range than has been searched for previously.
ALPHA is funded by a partnership of The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.
Reina Maruyama, professor of physics, deputy spokesperson of the ALPHA experiment, and a member of Wright Lab said, “I am excited we can do this experiment at Yale. I am grateful to Professor Barrett for offering to share this magnet with us, and Yale’s leadership and facilities teams for enabling this science. I am looking forward to turning on the magnet and starting to look for axions with this new instrument ALPHA.”
Karsten Heeger, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, director of Wright Lab, and a member of the Yale ALPHA team, said, ”We are excited to host the next step in the axion search for dark matter at Wright Lab.”
The move
According to Wright Lab research and development technician Frank Lopez, before Saturday’s move, contractors did preparatory work in SPL, such as removing a window of SPL, setting up stacked pieces of wood to safely secure an object at a height so a worker will not have to go under a suspended load, and installing the parts needed to protect the magnet during travel.
On the day of the move, Smedley Crane & Rigging handled the lifting from the basement, roll through the window, crane flight (including over the top of SPL), and delivery to Wright Lab.
Lopez commented that the “winds were pretty high, but the crane operators handled that with no issues”.
Images of the magnet move are available on the Wright Lab Flickr page here.
The axion dark matter search at Wright Lab
ALPHA complements two existing experiments at Wright Lab that are searching for axion dark matter, Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion CDM (HAYSTAC) and Rydberg Atoms at Yale (RAY).
HAYSTAC is a tunable radiofrequency cavity resonator that builds up the axion signal. HAYSTAC uses photon sensors, which are often used for quantum computing. It also uses an innovative quantum noise squeezing technique to speed up the data-taking of the experiment. HAYSTAC is located at Wright Lab, and the Yale team is responsible for systems engineering, cryogenics, and magnetics.
ALPHA will build on the success of HAYSTAC and search for even higher mass axions by employing a novel axion detector called a plasma haloscope. ALPHA will comprehensively investigate how new experimental ideas using plasmas can be used to detect the axion; pushing the boundaries of quantum detection and microwave technology.
To extend the mass range accessible by axion dark matter search experiments, the RAY group is developing a single-photon detector for haloscope experiments, such as HAYSTAC and ALPHA, based on microwave transitions between highly excited Rydberg states in potassium atoms.
Michael Jewell, associate research scientist, said, “HAYSTAC has been and will continue to pioneer dark matter axion searches at high masses. However, extending HAYSTAC’s reach to higher masses, where some theorists predict the axion to be, is a challenging problem and requires innovative ideas. ALPHA provides exactly that by breaking the typical requirement that a high-mass search requires a small detection volume and opens up the door to previously un-explored axion parameter space.”
ALPHA collaboration
The ALPHA experiment includes researchers from UC Berkeley, Yale, University of Colorado Boulder, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Wellesley, Arizona State University, Stockholm University, ITMO University, Cambridge and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Maruyama is the deputy spokesperson of ALPHA and PI of the Yale ALPHA team, which also includes Yale Physics faculty Keith Baker, D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics; Barrett; Charles Brown, assistant professor of physics; Heeger; and Steve Lamoreaux, professor of physics. Jewell is the ALPHA project technical coordinator.
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The Yale University Wright Lab is advancing the frontiers of fundamental physics through a broad research program in nuclear, particle, and astrophysics that includes precision studies of neutrinos; searches for dark matter; investigations of the building blocks and interactions of matter; exploration of quantum science and its applications for fundamental physics experiments; and observations of the early Universe. The laboratory’s unique combination of on-site state-of-the-art research facilities, technical infrastructure, and interaction spaces supports innovative instrumentation development, hands-on research, and training the next generation of scientists. Wright Lab is a part of the Yale Department of Physics and houses several Yale University core facilities that serve researchers across Yale’s Science Hill and beyond.
Mission
The mission of Yale Wright Laboratory is to advance understanding of the physical world, from the smallest particles to the evolution of the Universe, by engaging in fundamental research, developing novel applications, training future leaders in research and development, educating scholars, and enabling discovery.
Wright Lab supports a diverse community of scientists, staff, and students who advance our mission and fosters cross-disciplinary collaborations across Yale University and worldwide.
Climate Statement
The Yale Wright Laboratory is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion among all students, staff, and faculty. The goal of our lab community is to provide a safe and supportive environment for research, teaching, and mentoring. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core principles of our work place and part of the excellence we aim for.
Resources
Wright Lab, the Yale Department of Physics, and Yale University offer a number of resources on topics of climate, diversity, equity, and inclusion. In addition, the Committee on Climate and Diversity in the Physics Department is a point of contact for all questions and concerns. Please visit the following links for more information and a list of resources.
Collaboration
With its on-site core facilities and research program, Wright Lab fosters cross-disciplinary research collaborations across Yale University and worldwide. Wright Lab works with the Yale Center for Research Computing (YCRC) on novel solutions to the research computing challenges in nuclear, particle and astrophysics, and collaborates with the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA) on understanding dark matter in the Universe. Quantum sensors and techniques jointly developed with the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI) are used for axion searches at Wright Lab.
Wright Lab also has strong, interdisciplinary partnerships with the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and Yale Pathways to Science.
Funding
Wright Laboratory gratefully acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Department of Energy, Office of Science, High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the Krell Institute; the National Science Foundation; and Yale University.
See the full article here .
Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.
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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Collegiate School was renamed Yale College in 1718 to honor the school’s largest private benefactor for the first century of its existence, Elihu Yale. Yale University is consistently ranked as one of the top universities and is considered one of the most prestigious in the nation.
Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.
Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of June 2020, the university’s endowment was valued at $31.1 billion, the second largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.
Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Abel Prize laureates, and Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including U.S. Presidents, U.S. Supreme Court Justices, living billionaires, and heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, and Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.
Research
Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. According to the National Science Foundation , Yale spends $990 million on research and development.
Yale’s faculty include members of the National Academy of Sciences , members of the National Academy of Engineering and members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.
Yale’s English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called “Yale School”. These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale’s history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale’s Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.
In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.
Notable alumni
Over its history, Yale has produced many distinguished alumni in a variety of fields, ranging from the public to private sector. around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while the next largest majority of 16.6% go on to attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of Rhodes Scholarships, Marshall Scholarships, Truman Scholarships, Churchill Scholarships, and Mitchell Scholarships. The university is also the second largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, and has produced many MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale very high among research institutions producing the most Fulbright Scholars. Additionally, many living billionaires are Yale alumni.
At Yale, one of the most popular undergraduate majors among Juniors and Seniors is political science, with many students going on to serve careers in government and politics. Former presidents who attended Yale for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Former vice-president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president José Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napoléon.
Yale alumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, justices have been Yale alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Numerous Yale alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Sasse, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.
Yale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Benét, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong’o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellow and contemporary artist Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Fareed Zakaria.
In business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (Time Magazine), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton.
Yale alumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.
In the sporting arena, Yale alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and “the Father of American Football” Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skaters Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men’s champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.
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