Speaker
Description
The QuIPS (Quantum Invisible Particle Sensor) experiment is an optomechanical laser trap surrounded by active particle detectors. It is designed to reconstruct the full momenta of weak nuclear decay products by combining the recoil impulse imparted to a trapped nanosphere, read out at the standard quantum limit, with a direct measurement of the emitted beta particle. This enables searches for heavy sterile neutrinos in the 100s of keV to few MeV range, as well as other BSM physics. I will give an overview of the project, including the electron detector we have built and its first calibration results, and present first designs for an optical levitation setup now being developed at LBL using 1550 nm trapping light. I will also briefly cover the status of the first recoil demonstration now underway at Yale, where nanospheres are being loaded with F-18. Finally, I will discuss what future searches will require on both fronts: sphere arrays and squeezed readout to push the impulse sensitivity, and improved efficiency and energy resolution on the particle detection side.