Research:Robert Ellsworth


Robert Ellsworth is an experimentalist studying cosmic rays and particle physics. Both of these closely related lines of research involve large, often international, collaborations. The cosmic ray work is currently being done using the Milagro detector -- a water-Cerenkov experiment for the study of high-energy gamma rays produced in the galaxy. Milagro is a large, covered pool, located in the Jemez mountains near Los Alamos, New Mexico. It studies air showers produced by subatomic particles in the energy range 100 GeV to 100 TeV. Dr. Ellsworth’s elementary particle work, also with a large international collaboration, uses Ice Top, part of a neutrino detector (IceCube) located at the south pole. Dr. Ellsworth has also worked with the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector, based in Japan, that reported the first evidence for neutrino oscillations, thus explaining the long-standing puzzle of the "missing" solar neutrinos. The existence of neutrino oscillations was important because it demonstrated that neutrinos cannot be massless objects, as had been previously believed. Currently, Dr. Ellsworth is not supervising student research projects on this work.

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