COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 13 A Deeper Understanding of Nuclear Matter WENDY GREENBERG Physics student seeks to dive into the inner workings of the universe a new state of matter created at RHIC, last seen microseconds after the Big Bang. “Think of it as a sort of soup of subatomic particles,” he says. Bennett does not go halfway in physics. Those who know him, he says, know that “physics is not just what I study, but it is a quintessential part of who I am.” Growing up in upstate New York, he was a piano-playing, threesport athlete but he also “stared at diagrams and equations as one would a picture book . . . not a day went by where physics and the unknown were not at the center of my attention,” he says. Last fall he worked on cosmic ray testing at Brookhaven and learned from Lehigh graduate student Tristan Protzmann. Cosmic rays, he explained, are the highly energetic particles that travel through space at relativistic speeds, or close to the speed of light. “It was amazing using their equipment,” he says. “The scale of RHIC is amazing.” Bennett was able to present his work at the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society conference in New Orleans. “I like to challenge myself, and like solving problems,” he says. Not only does Bennett want to have an impact on the scientifically significant sPHENIX experiment at Brookhaven, but looking forward, he wants to become a communicator of science so that others can appreciate the universe as he does, and maybe get excited about heavy ions. ● At Brookhaven, sEPD will be one of many sPHENIX subdetectors used to better understand the heavy ion collisions occurring at RHIC. “My experiment was testing on sEPD, which, when sEPD is implemented into the overall sPHENIX experiment, will study the orientation of charged particles,” he says. On a broader scale, the experiment provides direct evidence that invisible cosmic rays are a real measurable quantity. Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, Lehigh is leading the construction of an sEPD at Brookhaven. For Bennett, the experiments are a way to better understand the universe. “Heavy ion collisions at high energy provide a possibility to address the many puzzling questions life brings us, from how the universe worked 13.8 billion years ago to how it interacts on the smallest of scales today,” Bennett wrote in his research abstract. At Brookhaven, sPHENIX will be used to collect data from RHIC to better understand quark-guon plasma, Justin Bennett ’23 has always loved physics. As he puts it, “for my entire life I contemplated the complexities of the universe.” But it wasn’t until his second year at Lehigh that he could become more serious about heavy ions. When Bennett took a course with Anders Knopse, assistant professor of physics, whose work includes experiments at the Large Hydron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and worked with Rosi Reed, associate professor of physics, he found their passion for nuclear physics inspiring. He applied for and received a research grant from the College of Arts and Sciences which allowed him to develop and perform benchmark tests for light efficiency of the tiles that make up the Event Plane Detector (sEPD) at sPHENIX, an experiment under construction at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY. “It was an opportunity to grow as a researcher,” he says. “I wanted to dive deep.” Justin Bennett (above) works in the lab of Rosi Reed. The PHENIX detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory (below). BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY / SCIENCE SOURCE, CHRISTA NEU
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