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Carmen Carmona Benitez

Carmen Carmona Benitez — Assistant Professor of Physics — Faculty
Office: 320D Osmond Laboratory
Address: 0104 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 US
mzc267@psu.edu
+1 814 865 6476
Carmen Carmona Benitez
Physics LZ Project 8 Dark Matter Neutrinos CMA

I am an assistant professor of physics at Penn State University and a member of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC). I have been a faculty member of Penn State since 2017. I am a particle astrophysicist working on the hunt for dark matter, the “invisible” matter that makes up 85 percent of the matter in the Universe! I was a key member of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, the most sensitive dark matter detector until its decommission in 2017. I am now working on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, the largest dark matter detector ever built, one mile underground in a former gold mine in South Dakota. LZ, an international collaboration of 250 scientists, will be at the forefront of the search for dark matter in the next decade. My group leads efforts in the cryogenics and xenon circulation system, commissioning and operation of the detector, bias mitigation techniques, background simulations and WIMP data analysis.

Publications
  1. 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
  2. D. Akerib, others “Projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment to the two-neutrino and neutrinoless double β decays of ^134Xe.” Phys. Rev. C 104 6 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.104.065501
  3. D. Akerib, others “Effective field theory analysis of the first LUX dark matter search.” Phys. Rev. D 103 12 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.103.122005
  4. D. Akerib, others “Improving sensitivity to low-mass dark matter in LUX using a novel electrode background mitigation technique.” Phys. Rev. D 104 1 (2021) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.012011
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. D. Akerib, others “Search for two neutrino double electron capture of ^124Xe and ^126Xe in the full exposure of the LUX detector.” J. Phys. G 47 10 (2020) doi:10.1088/1361-6471/ab9c2d
  8. D. Akerib, others “Projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment to the 0νββ decay of ^136Xe.” Phys. Rev. C 102 1 (2020) doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.102.014602
  9. D. Akerib, others “The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment.” Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 953 (2020) doi:10.1016/j.nima.2019.163047
  10. D. Akerib, others “Calibration, event reconstruction, data analysis, and limit calculation for the LUX dark matter experiment.” Phys. Rev. D 97 10 (2018) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.102008

Carmen Carmona Benitez's research group

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Yen-Ting Chin Yen-Ting Chin Graduate Student Physics ypc5402@psu.edu 18144248968 Osmond Laboratory CMA Dark Matter
Jack Genovesi Jack Genovesi Postdoc Physics jgg27@psu.edu 8455197418 320A Osmond Laboratory IGC Dark Matter
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

Carmen Carmona Benitez'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.