Office Location: 273 Physics
Office Phone: 919-660-2962
Email Address: schol@phy.duke.edu
Web Page: http://phy.duke.edu/~schol/
Specialties:
Experimental high energy physics
Education:
PhD, Caltech, 1997
MS, Caltech, 1991
BSc, McGill University, 1989
Current projects: Super-Kamiokande, K2K (KEK to Kamioka) long baseline experiment, T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) long baseline experiment, SNEWS
Research Description: Prof. Scholberg's broad research interests include experimental elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Her main specific interests are in neutrino physics: she studies neutrino oscillations with the Super-Kamiokande experiment, a giant underground water Cherenkov detector located in a mine in the Japanese Alps. Super-K was constructed to search for proton decay and to study neutrinos from the sun, from cosmic ray collisions in the atmosphere, and from supernovae. Prof. Scholberg's primary involvement is with the atmospheric neutrino data analysis, which in 1998 yielded the first convincing evidence for neutrino oscillation (implying the existence of non-zero neutrino mass).
One of the most important questions that we may be able to answer with neutrino oscillation experiments over the next couple of decades is the question of CP (charge conjugation-parity) violation in neutrinos. It's now well known that processes involving quarks violate CP symmetry; it's suspected that the same is true for leptons (such as neutrinos), but leptonic CP violation is as yet unobserved. We hope that understanding of CP violation, along with knowledge of the other neutrino parameters, may lead to insight into the question of the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. The long-term program of Super-K and the associated long baseline neutrino beam experiment aims to answer these questions.
The K2K ("KEK to Kamioka") long baseline experiment involving an artifical beam of neutrinos sent 250 km from Tsukuba to Super-K has now achieved its goal of verifying the atmospheric neutrino oscillation hypothesis, and further long baseline experiments will make precision oscillation measurements. The next step in neutrino oscillation research is the T2K ("Tokai to Kamioka") high intensity neutrino beam experiment, which will search for a small appearance of electron neutrinos in a beam of muon neutrinos. It is essential to know whether the oscillation parameter describing such appearance is non-zero before we may make further progress towards leptonic CP violation.
Prof. Scholberg also coordinates SNEWS, the SuperNova Early Warning System, an inter-experiment collaboration of detectors with Galactic supernova sensitivity. Neutrinos from a core collapse will precede the photon signal by hours; therefore coincident observation of a burst in several neutrino detectors will be a robust early warning of a visible supernova. The goals of SNEWS are to provide the astronomical community with a prompt alert of a Galactic core collapse, as well as to optimize global sensitivity to supernova neutrino physics.
Areas of Interest:
Particle physics
Astrophysics
Nuclear physics
Recent Publications (More Publications)