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Luiz de Viveiros

Luiz de Viveiros — Assistant Professor of Physics — Faculty
Office: 320E Osmond Laboratory
Address: 0104 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 US
lad57@psu.edu
+1 814 865 7533
Luiz de Viveiros
Physics LZ Project 8 Dark Matter Neutrinos CMA

My research to tries to answer one of the Big Questions in science: what is the universe made of? My research focuses on neutrinos, the most abundant known massive particle in the universe, and the search for dark matter, the unknown stuff that makes up more than 80% of the matter in the universe!

I have a long history of working on dark matter experiments, having been part of CMDS-II, XENON10, ZEPLIN-III, and the Large Underground Xenon (LUX); and I am currently working on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, a next-generation dark-matter detector that will be the most sensitive search over the next decade. More recently, I have been working on the Project 8 Neutrino Mass experiment. Although the neutrino was discovered almost 60 years ago, it’s one of nature’s most elusive particles, and we still don’t know one of its most fundamental properties, its mass. The Project 8 experiment seeks to determine the neutrino mass by precisely measuring the energy spectrum of Tritium beta decay, using a technique that allows the measurement of individual electrons in a magnetic trap, called Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES).
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I am originally from São Luís in Brasil, but I did both my undergraduate and graduate studies in the US. I have a Bachelors Degree from Clark University in Massachusetts, where I majored in Physics and Philosophy, and worked in the Organic Superconductors Lab. I got my PhD in Physics at Brown University, where I was part of the Particle Astrophysics Group, and my advisor was Prof. Richard Gaitskell. During my graduate studies, I worked on the XENON, LUZ and LZ experiments. XENON10 was located at the Gran Sasso Underground Labs, about 1 hour northeast of Rome, so I got to spend a year living in Italy. I also spent 4 years living in Portugal, where I did a Postdoc at Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partícula (LIP) in Coimbra; and 3 years in Santa Barbara, California (USA), where I did another postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara (undoubtedly the most beautifully located campus ever!).

ORCID: 0000-0002-7038-2361

Publications
  1. J. Aalbers, others “A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics.” (2022)
  2. D. Akerib, others “Fast and Flexible Analysis of Direct Dark Matter Search Data with Machine Learning.” (2022)
  3. A. Esfahani, others “The Project 8 Neutrino Mass Experiment.” (2022)
  4. A. Ashtari Esfahani, others “Bayesian analysis of a future β decay experiment's sensitivity to neutrino mass scale and ordering.” Phys. Rev. C 103 6 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.103.065501
  5. A. Esfahani, others “Viterbi Decoding of CRES Signals in Project 8.” (2021)
  6. D. Akerib, others “Simulations of Events for the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Dark Matter Experiment.” Astropart. Phys. 125 (2021) doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2020.102480
  7. D. Akerib, others “Constraints on effective field theory couplings using 311.2 days of LUX data.” Phys. Rev. D 104 6 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.062005
  8. D. Akerib, others “Projected sensitivities of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment to new physics via low-energy electron recoils.” Phys. Rev. D 104 9 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.092009
  9. D. Akerib, others “Investigation of background electron emission in the LUX detector.” Phys. Rev. D 102 9 (2020) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.102.092004
  10. D. Akerib, others “The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) radioactivity and cleanliness control programs.” Eur. Phys. J. C 80 11 (2020) doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8420-x

Luiz de Viveiros's research group

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Srinikitha Bhagvati Srinikitha Bhagvati Graduate Student Physics skb6413@psu.edu – 108 Osmond Laboratory CMA Dark Matter
Yen-Ting Chin Yen-Ting Chin Graduate Student Physics ypc5402@psu.edu 18144248968 Osmond Laboratory CMA Dark Matter
Salvatore Cordova Salvatore Cordova Staff Physics sac6821@psu.edu 857891241 NA Osmond Laboratory IGC
Reagen Garcia Reagen Garcia Graduate Student Physics rgarcia@psu.edu --- 114 Osmond Laboratory CMA Neutrinos
Richard Mueller Richard Mueller Graduate Student Physics rjm6826@psu.edu +1 814 865 7533 6E Osmond Laboratory IGC Neutrinos
Katherine Wild Katherine Wild Graduate Student Physics kvw5673@psu.edu (954) 225-1854 108 Osmond Laboratory IGC Dark Matter
Wei Zha Wei Zha Graduate Student Physics wpz5141@psu.edu – 114 Whitmore Laboratory IGC Dark Matter
Andrew Ziegler Andrew Ziegler Graduate Student Physics ziegler@psu.edu – 6E Osmond Laboratory CMA Neutrinos

Luiz de Viveiros's former group members

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Daniel Kodroff Daniel Kodroff Graduate Student Physics dsk192@psu.edu 0000000000 Basement Osmond Laboratory CMA Dark Matter, Neutrinos
About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.