Sean Finch, Research Scientist  

Sean Finch

Office Location: TUNL Room 402, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone: +1 919 660 2696
Email Address: sean.finch@duke.edu
Web Page: http://www.tunl.duke.edu/~sfinch/index.html

Specialties:
Experimental nuclear physics

Education:
PhD, Duke University, 2015
MA, Duke University, 2013
BS, North Carolina State University, 2009

Research Categories: Experimental nuclear physics

Research Description: I work with Professor Tornow on experimental searches for two neutrino double beta decay (2nuBB) to excited final states. While detection of the neutrinoless decay mode will inform us if the neutrino is its own antiparticle (a Majorana rather than Dirac particle), 2nuBB decay can give us insight into the nuclear matrix elements required to extract the Majorana mass of the neutrino from the decay rate. In order to reduce radioactive backgrounds, our experimental set up is at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility (KURF) located in a active limestone mine in Virginia, 1700 feet underground.

Areas of Interest:
Double-beta decay

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Haselschwardt, SJ; Lenardo, BG; Daniels, T; Finch, SW; Friesen, FQL; Howell, CR; Malone, CR; Mancil, E; Tornow, W, Observation of Low-Lying Isomeric States in ^{136}Cs: A New Avenue for Dark Matter and Solar Neutrino Detection in Xenon Detectors., Physical Review Letters, vol. 131 no. 5 (August, 2023), pp. 052502, American Physical Society (APS) [doi]  [abs].
  2. Johnson, SR; Janssens, RVF; Friman-Gayer, U; Brown, BA; Crider, BP; Finch, SW; Krishichayan, ; Little, DR; Mukhopadhyay, S; Peters, EE; Ramirez, APD; Silano, JA; Tonchev, AP; Tornow, W; Yates, SW, Testing shell-model interactions at high excitation energy and low spin: Nuclear resonance fluorescence in Ge 74, Physical Review C, vol. 108 no. 2 (August, 2023), American Physical Society (APS) [doi]  [abs].
  3. Ramirez, APD; Silano, JA; Malone, RC; Stoyer, MA; Tonchev, AP; Gooden, ME; Wilhelmy, JB; Finch, SW; Howell, CR; Krishichayan, ; Tornow, W, Fission product yields from the U 238 (n,f) reaction at En=4.6 MeV, Physical Review C, vol. 107 no. 5 (May, 2023), American Physical Society (APS) [doi]  [abs].
  4. Tornow, W; Tonchev, AP; Finch, SW; Krishichayan, ; Wang, XB; Hayes, AC; Yeomans, HGD; Newmark, DA, Neutral-current neutrino cross section and expected supernova signals for 40Ar from a three-fold increase in the magnetic dipole strength, Physics Letters B, vol. 835 (December, 2022) [doi]  [abs].
  5. Savran, D; Isaak, J; Schwengner, R; Massarczyk, R; Scheck, M; Tornow, W; Battaglia, G; Beck, T; Finch, SW; Fransen, C; Friman-Gayer, U; Gonzalez, R; Hoemann, E; Janssens, RVF; Johnson, SR; Jones, MD; Kleemann, J; Krishichayan, ; Little, DR; O'Donnell, D; Papst, O; Pietralla, N; Sinclair, J; Werner, V; Wieland, O; Wilhelmy, J, Model-independent determination of the dipole response of Zn 66 using quasimonoenergetic and linearly polarized photon beams, Physical Review C, vol. 106 no. 4 (October, 2022) [doi]  [abs].