{"id":9466,"date":"2018-05-14T12:31:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T16:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=9466"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:43:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:43:25","slug":"mcdonald-institute-launch","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/mcdonald-institute-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Plays Major Role in McDonald Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Plays Major Role in McDonald Institute\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

During his PhD research, Qu\u00e9bec-born astroparticle physicist Simon Viel<\/a> worked on the ATLAS experiment<\/a> at the Large Hadron Collider<\/a> (LHC), a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets colliding protons and heavy ions beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He remained involved with ATLAS \u2014 the largest particle detector ever built, and one of four major experiments at the LHC \u2014 during his postdoctoral fellowship at California\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But last year, Viel wanted to come back to Canada to continue his research. Which was perfect timing, because the birth of the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute<\/a> (originally the Canadian Particle Astrophysics Research Centre) included federal funding to create 15 new faculty positions, including his post in Carleton\u2019s Department of Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very nice synergy here,\u201d says Viel, whose interest in dark matter research and past experience with particle detectors mesh well with Carleton\u2019s focus on experimental astroparticle physics. \u201cCanadian physicists, including researchers at Carleton, are really strong in this field, and the creation of the McDonald Institute will help us make more scientific progress in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Simon Viel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The institute, based at Queen\u2019s University in Kingston, Ont., and comprised of eight university partners and five affiliated research organizations, including Sudbury\u2019s SNOLAB<\/a>, was established thanks to a $63.7-million investment from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 10, the McDonald Institute was formally launched and renamed in honour of 2015 Nobel Prize winner and Queen\u2019s emeritus professor, Arthur B. McDonald<\/a>, a long-time collaborator of Carleton Distinguished Research Prof. David Sinclair<\/a>, one of SNOLAB\u2019s pioneering scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the institute\u2019s website proclaims: \u201cParticle astrophysics is the study of the fundamental properties of the most basic building blocks of nature, and their influence on the evolution of structure in the universe. The questions being addressed in this field are considered worldwide to be amongst the most important in physics today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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McDonald Institute Seeks Answers to the Most Important Questions in Physics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From their founding role in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory<\/a> (SNO) experiment two kilometres below the Earth\u2019s surface in an active mine to its evolution into the world-class SNOLAB facility, which is home to many experiments, including the DEAP-3600<\/a> search for dark matter, Carleton researchers have long been at the forefront of the international astroparticle physics community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viel knew about Carleton\u2019s reputation in particle physics while doing his postdoc at Berkeley and his PhD at TRIUMF<\/a> (the Vancouver-based particle accelerator centre) and the University of British Columbia (a McDonald Institute partner). He liked the commitment of Carleton\u2019s Physics Department to be a national and international leader – not only in experimental particle physics –  but also the related fields of theoretical physics and medical physics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the formation of the McDonald Institute \u2014 and an opportunity to collaborate closely with astroparticle physicists at Carleton such as Prof. Mark Boulay<\/a>, DEAP-3600\u2019s project director \u2014 was the catalyst that brought Viel back to Canada in August 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From left to right: Prof. Simon Viel, Sandra Crocker, associate vice-president (Strategic Initiatives and Operations) and Prof. Mark Boulay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of his primary research goals is to develop software for detector simulation, event reconstruction and data analysis for DEAP-3600, a detector at SNOLAB, filled with more than three tonnes of liquid argon, that could allow scientists to observe and identify dark matter by tracking the faint light pulses that result from the elastic scattering of dark matter particles when they hit argon nuclei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dark matter is an invisible substance which is thought to account for roughly one-quarter of the universe\u2019s energy density. It is believed to outweigh normal matter (which includes the atoms we are familiar with) by a factor of five to one, even though its existence has so far only been inferred by its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies and other indirect measurements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viel is also working on next-generation liquid argon experiments to look for dark matter, and evaluating the suitability of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) to detect scintillation light from liquid argon and xenon for future large-scale low-background experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is currently part of the international DEAP-3600 team analyzing data from the detector\u2019s first year of operation, with a paper on their findings expected in the months ahead. McDonald is still an active participant in day-to-day discussions with the team, says Viel, noting the value of having a researcher of his prominence as an advocate for this experimental approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DEAP-3600 is scheduled to take data until the beginning of 2020, but Viel and his collaborators are already planning ahead for DarkSide-20k, a detector with 20 tonnes of liquid argon that\u2019s scheduled to start acquiring data at Italy\u2019s Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe larger the target, the more sensitivity we have to very rare occurrences,\u201d says Viel. \u201cTo build such large detectors, we need large collaborations. The formation of the McDonald Institute allowed for the hiring of many new people to work together, and allowed a group of Canadian universities and institutes to put their resources together towards this goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Global Research Collaboration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beyond DarkSide-20k, Viel is already looking ahead to a future multi-hundred tonnes liquid argon dark matter experiment that\u2019s currently being designed by the recently-formed Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. McDonald has played a key role in bringing together all of the world\u2019s scientists working on liquid argon dark matter searches,\u201d says Viel, \u201cto form this global collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to advancing fundamental knowledge and developing new technologies that could have applications in areas other than astrophysics \u2014 such as medical physics, security and the automotive sector \u2014 the McDonald Institute has a public outreach mandate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After our exciting announcement event at the @queensuisabel<\/a> last Thursday, we unveiled our brand new Visitor Centre to the local community! It will serve as a great #scicomm<\/a> resource and a connection point between scientists and the public.https:\/\/t.co\/3v2l8WxP1s<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/v4as4QCgEC<\/a><\/p>

\u2014 McDonald Institute (@McDonaldInst) May 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A new visitor centre<\/a> in Stirling Hall at Queen\u2019s will feature a virtual reality setup that will allow guests to travel though space and experience a solar storm. The centre will also have an augmented reality sandbox that will teach guests about gravitational fields in an interactive and tactile manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to communicate to Canadians about the work we\u2019re doing and the impact of our research,\u201d says Viel, \u201cnot least because ultimately they\u2019re the ones who are funding it. I am very grateful for the amazing research opportunities this creates, and am looking forward to sharing our results with everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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During his PhD research, Qu\u00e9bec-born astroparticle physicist Simon Viel worked on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets colliding protons and heavy ions beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva. He remained involved with ATLAS \u2014 the largest particle detector ever built, and one of four major experiments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":9495,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28,13],"cu_story_tag":[1919],"class_list":["post-9466","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-science"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98145,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9466\/revisions\/98145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=9466"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=9466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}