Research & Publications

1What do I work on?

I'm interested in probing the microphysics of dark matter through new experimental techniques. We're pretty sure dark matter is out there, but so far we've only been able to detect its interactions with ordinary matter through gravity.

The allowed range of parameter space for dark matter spans 90 orders of magnitude1. That means dark matter could be lighter than any known particle or heavier than the sun! We have good ideas of where in this huge range of possibilities dark matter could live, and the scientific community is working really hard to probe all of them.

(a) wave-like light dark matter WIMPs primordial black holes 10⁻²² eV 1 eV 1 GeV Planck mass M☉ (b) light dark matter WIMPs 1 keV 1 MeV 1 GeV 1 TeV SENSEI · dark matter–electron scattering FASER · dark photons
Fig. 1. Where dark matter could live. (a) The full range of dark matter masses that are still allowed, which spans about 90 orders of magnitude. (b) A zoom in on the light dark matter window, showing the masses that SENSEI and FASER are sensitive to. These ranges are approximate.

I'm interested in a class of models known as "Light Dark Matter", which are dark matter candidates less than the mass of a proton (1 GeV)2 but still large enough that they're particles, not waves3. Dark matter in this range of masses would belong to an entire dark sector4. This means there could be all sorts of different types of dark matter particles and force carriers (like a dark matter version of the photon).

This means that you can look for dark matter particles in our galaxy, and you can try to make dark matter in colliders! I'm lucky enough to work on two experiments that are searching in both regimes. I work on the SENSEI5 experiment to look for light dark matter present in our galaxy, and I work on the FASER6 experiment searching for dark photons produced in high energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

(a) side view pixels · 15 µm silicon 675 µm χ e⁻ (b) top view 2 every other pixel reads 0 (c) Skipper readout 0 1 2 3 electrons in a pixel pixels (log)
Fig. 2. What a dark matter signal looks like in SENSEI. (a) A dark matter particle χ scatters off an electron in the silicon, and the freed electron drifts up to a pixel. (b) Looking from above, one pixel picks up a couple of electrons while the rest read zero. (c) The Skipper amplifier measures the charge in each pixel many times without destroying it, and averaging these measurements gives a separate peak for each number of electrons. This means that we can essentially count electrons one by one. Not to scale.
magnets vetoν IFT veto timing preshower ATLAS 480 m decay volume · 1.5 m A′ e⁺ e⁻ A′ → e⁺e⁻ FASERν tracking stations calorimeter 3 m z y dark photon (leaves no trace) electron and positron tracks
Fig. 3. What a dark photon signal looks like in FASER. A dark photon A′ produced in collisions at ATLAS travels 480 m down the beamline, through rock, the FASERν neutrino detector, and the veto stations, without leaving a trace. If it decays inside the decay volume, it produces an electron and positron that come out almost on top of each other. The magnets then bend them apart, and they leave hits in each tracking station before showering in the calorimeter.

2Projects

  1. 2.1

    Searching for Dark Photons with FASER

    I'm the analysis contact for FASER's new dark photon search, where I coordinate a team of about 10 people from five institutions. I redesigned the analysis with three new signal regions that pick up highly boosted pairs that look like a single track, decays past the decay volume, and low-energy pairs from non-electron final states. That more than doubled our acceptance for e⁺e⁻ pairs compared to FASER's first search, and gave us sensitivity to π⁺π⁻ and μ⁺μ⁻ final states for the first time. I also built the core analysis workflow and did most of the background and systematics studies. This analysis sets world-leading limits on dark photons between 10 and 150 MeV, and we released a conference note in March 2026 with the paper coming soon.

    Analysis · Python · Data Analysis · Dark Sectors at Colliders

  2. 2.2

    Pythonic Analysis Framework for FASER

    Developed a fully pythonic framework for FASER analysis based on coffea, uproot, dask

    Analysis · Python · Data Analysis · Dark Sectors at Colliders

  3. 2.3

    FASER Operations and Offline Software

    When I joined FASER I built the tool that calculates the detector's deadtime and the resulting luminosity, and it's used by every FASER physics analysis. Since then I've kept contributing to the offline reconstruction software and taking monitoring shifts.

    Software · Python · Software · Detector Operations · Dark Sectors at Colliders

  4. 2.4

    Daily Modulation of Dark Matter Signals

    Dark matter can scatter off the Earth on its way to a detector, which means the rate you see can change over the course of a day depending on how much of the Earth is in the way. I showed that searching for this daily modulation can improve limits on light dark matter in Silicon, Xenon, and Argon detectors. I then co-led SENSEI's search for this daily modulation, and I did the signal modeling, prepared the dataset, and wrote the paper. That search improved direct-detection limits by nearly an order of magnitude for dark matter lighter than 1 MeV.

    Theory · Python · Phenomenology · Direct Detection of Dark Matter

  5. 2.5

    DarkMatterRates

    Wrote code that uses pytorch to calculate dark matter electron scattering rates in Silicon, Xenon, and Argon. It runs on GPUs and supports QCDark2, QCDark, and QEDark. This code is also capable of taking in custom inputs for the galactic dark matter halo distribution. It can even calculate daily modulation of rates by taking inputs from simulations like DaMaSCUS or Verne. The code is public on Zenodo and is used by the SENSEI collaboration.

    Theory · Python · Phenomenology · Direct Detection of Dark Matter

  6. 2.6

    SENSEI Analysis

    Co-wrote the code that calculates the statistical framework for setting exclusion curves for SENSEI. This framework has been used in every SENSEI analysis since our first run at SNOLAB. I also designed the data quality cuts (masks for hot pixels and columns) and contributed to background studies.

    Analysis · Python · Statistics · Direct Detection of Dark Matter

  7. 2.7

    Machine Learning For Halo Independent Studies of Dark Matter

    Working on a project to take the dark matter scattering rates seen at detectors and use machine learning techniques to extrapolate the expected shape of the dark matter halo distribution.

    Theory · Python · Pytorch · Machine Learning · Direct Detection of Dark Matter

  8. 2.8

    CCD R&D and Low-Energy Backgrounds

    With a URA Visiting Scholars award, I spent a year in the CCD lab at Fermilab working on hardware projects related to SENSEI detectors. I worked to reduce low threshold backgrounds and characterize detector properties. To do this, I set up my own system and took measurements at the surface and additionally took measurements with our underground detector in the MINOS cavern. Along the way I came up with a technique for generating charge inside the sensor on demand, which we used to study spurious charge. I then used it to directly measure charge traps that hold onto charge for more than 1000 seconds, and built a readout simulation to see how much they add to SENSEI's single-electron background. We found that the traps we measured can't explain the single-electron rate we see, but there could still be a larger hidden population of traps that does. I'm first author on the paper.

    Hardware · CCD · Hardware · Readout Electronics · Vacuum Systems · Direct Detection of Dark Matter

3Selected publications

Last updated October 2026. The full list is on INSPIRE. (lead) marks papers I led or co-led.

  1. [1]

    Long-Lived Charge Trap Characterization for Rare-Event Searches with Skipper-CCDs. arXiv Preprint (submitted to Physical Review Applied) (2026) (lead)

  2. [2]

    First Search for Quirks at the LHC with FASER. Physical Review Letters (2026)

  3. [3]

    Charge-Trap Analysis in a SENSEI Skipper-CCD: Understanding Low-Energy Backgrounds in Rare-Event Searches. Physical Review Applied (2026)

  4. [4]

    Characterization of Spurious Charge in SENSEI Skipper-CCDs. arXiv Preprint (submitted to Physical Review Applied) (2026)

  5. [5]

    SENSEI: A Search for Diurnal Modulation in Sub-GeV Dark Matter Scattering. Physical Review Letters (2026) (lead)

  6. [6]

    New Results from a Search for Dark Photons with the FASER Detector at the LHC. CERN Conference Note (CERN-FASER-CONF-2026-001) (2026) (lead)

  7. [7]

    Earth-scattering induced modulation in low-threshold dark matter experiments. Journal of High Energy Physics (2025) (lead)

  8. [8]

    First Measurement of the Muon Neutrino Interaction Cross Section and Flux as a Function of Energy at the LHC with FASER. Physical Review Letters (2025)

  9. [9]

    SENSEI at SNOLAB: Single-Electron Event Rate and Implications for Dark Matter. Physical Review Letters (2025)

  10. [10]

    Shining light on the dark sector: search for axion-like particles and other new physics in photonic final states with FASER. Journal of High Energy Physics (2025)

  11. [11]

    First Direct-Detection Results on Sub-GeV Dark Matter Using the SENSEI Detector at SNOLAB. Physical Review Letters (2025)

  12. [12]

    Search for dark photons with the FASER detector at the LHC. Physics Letters B (2024)

  13. [13]

    First Direct Observation of Collider Neutrinos with FASER at the LHC. Physical Review Letters (2023)