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McDonald, Art, 1953-
Oral history interview with Art McDonald, 2021 April 16.
In this interview, Art McDonald discusses: careerlong work around tests of the Standard Model; Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) measurement of neutrino properties that fall outside the original Standard Model; childhood and family history in Canada; masters work on positron annihilation; time at the Kellogg Laboratory at Caltech with William Fowler; early origins of and motivations behind the SNO project; postdoc at Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory using a particle accelerator to continue experimental work on fundamental symmetries; history of Chalk River; collaborations with George Ewan; collaborations with Hamish Robertson studying the measurement and production of lithium-6; work at Princeton with Will Happer using lasers to polarize nuclei; building a continuous laser beam at Chalk River; work on parity violation in nuclei; work on the Princeton cyclotron; overseeing Kevin Coulters thesis project, the first use of laser-induced-spin-polarization of helium; polarized Helium-3s current uses; technical challenges of building SNO and the transition from construction to operations; SNO and the solar neutrino problem; Herb Chens involvement with the design of SNO; SNOLAB; decision take position at Queens University; early published findings from SNO; comparison of Super-Kamiokande and SNO experiments; impact of SNO results on the understanding of the Standard Model; winning the Nobel Prize for solving the solar neutrino problem, observing that solar electron neutrinos were oscillating into muon and tau neutrinos; current work with the DarkSide-20k collaboration and how that work led to an open-source ventilator project in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic; current SNOLAB DEAP experiment using liquid argon to attempt to detect dark matter particles. Toward the end of the interview, McDonald reflects on interrelatedness across disciplines within physics, and his ongoing curiosity in searches for dark matter and neutrino-less double beta decay.
Arthur Bruce McDonald is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
Chen, Herbert, 1960-
Fowler, William A.
Happer, William, 1939-
Robertson, R. G. Hamish, 1943-
California Institute of Technology
Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories
Princeton University
Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.)
Dark matter (Astronomy)
Positron annihilation -- Research.
Solar neutrinos
Standard model (Nuclear physics)
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Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA
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