Posted on May 6, 2005

Chad Orzel, assistant professor of physics, has received a three-year grant of $130,485 from the National Science Foundation for a proposal titled “Radioactive Krypton Background Evaluation by Atom Counting.” The project will involve measuring the level of krypton contamination in ultra-pure neon or xenon gas by trapping and detecting single atoms of krypton. This research is of interest to scientists working on the next generation of neutrino and dark matter detectors, for whom krypton contamination is a major source of background counts. The grant, through the Particle Astrophysics program at the NSF, includes funding for new equipment and summer student support. The experiments will be done in Orzel's lab. This is Orzel's second research grant at Union. He earlier received a two-year grant from Research Corporation.