Who we are, what we do

We conduct basic research in nuclear and particle physics, applying this expertise to solve problems of national importance.

By pushing the limits of our understanding of the smallest building blocks of matter through diverse experiments probing aspects of subatomic reactions, we aim to provide a more thorough understanding of the basic building blocks that make up our universe.

Our people

We employ nuclear physics techniques to study matter in the extreme and transient pressures produced by high explosives. We are home to two active, one senior (retired), and four retired Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows and six American Physical Society Fellows.

Our expertise

Subatomic Physics leads or plays a major role in large-scale collaborations with physicists from universities and institutions around the world performing experiments at a variety of world-class facilities, including

• The search for the quark-gluon plasma at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

• The quest for sterile neutrinos at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

• The measurement of the neutron electron dipole moment, which will run at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source.

• The study of neutron decay at the Laboratory’s Ultracold Neutron Facility in order to examine the fundamental properties of matter, including a neutron lifetime experiment and the UCNA experiment studying the electron's momentum in polarized decay.
• Radiography of dynamic materials in real time using the Laboratory’s LANSCE accelerator.