UTA Physicist Secures $1.3 Million Grant to Advance Neutrino Research

Ben Jones, associate professor of physics at The University of Texas at Arlington, has recently been distinguished as part of the 2025 cohort of the Experimental Physics Investigators program, an elite collective of mid-career scientists dedicated to advancing pioneering experimental physics research. This significant honor recognizes Jones’s innovative contributions to neutrino physics and underscores the university’s commitment to front-line scientific discovery.

The Experimental Physics Investigators award, generously funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, grants $1.3 million over five years to each member of the cohort. This substantial financial backing provides researchers with the rare opportunity to pursue groundbreaking ideas that often fall outside the scope of traditional grant funding. Jones’s selection into this cohort reflects not only his scientific excellence but also the transformative potential of his proposed research.

Jones, who co-directs the Center for Advanced Detector Technologies at UTA, has devoted his career to unraveling the mysteries surrounding neutrinos—elusive subatomic particles that challenge our conventional understanding of physics. His research delves deeply into the fundamental properties of neutrinos, specifically focusing on their mass scale and the search for rare processes such as neutrinoless double beta decay, an event that, if observed, would reveal that neutrinos are Majorana particles, meaning they are their own antiparticles.

With the Moore Foundation support, Jones intends to extend his expertise in single-molecule fluorescence imaging—an innovative technique his laboratory pioneered for detecting barium ions—to explore the phenomenon known as neutrinoless double electron capture. This process involves the simultaneous capture of two electrons within a nucleus without the emission of neutrinos, a mechanism hypothesized to occur exclusively if the neutrino is fundamentally its own antiparticle. His approach will apply to argon and krypton gas environments, presenting new experimental pathways to probe this rare process.

Understanding whether neutrinos are Majorana particles is a critical question in particle physics, as its implications touch upon the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe and potentially inform the mechanisms behind the origin of neutrino masses. Traditional experimental methods have faced limitations in sensitivity and detection efficiency, but Jones’s strategy incorporates atomic, molecular, and optical physics techniques combined with chemical sensing innovations, breaking new ground in this demanding field.

Jones remarked on the ambitious nature of his project, highlighting the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration. By leveraging tools commonly used in chemical sensing and optical imaging, his research bridges diverse scientific domains to tackle this grand challenge. The project exemplifies how contemporary physics research increasingly depends on converging scientific fields to enable transformative discoveries.

The broader context of Jones’s work includes his contributions to internationally significant experiments such as NEXT—the Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon Time Projection Chamber—which seeks to detect neutrinoless double beta decay events by tagging barium ions. Additionally, his involvement with Project 8 focuses on precision measurements of the neutrino mass via cyclotron radiation detection, and his work with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica centers on detecting high-energy neutrinos originating from cosmic sources.

Jones’s remarkable career trajectory is reflected in his receipt of the 2025 International Committee for Future Accelerators Early Career Researcher Instrumentation Award. This accolade acknowledges his advancement of cutting-edge instrumentation crucial for particle physics research. Since his appointment at UTA in 2016, he has secured over $5 million in research funding, authored more than 450 scientific publications, and accrued over 13,000 citations, establishing himself as a leading figure in neutrino physics.

Among his recent intellectual contributions is a novel theoretical proposal published in Physical Review Letters, titled “Superradiant Neutrino Lasers from Radioactive Condensates.” This work envisions a speculative yet captivating mechanism whereby a material system could emit coherent bursts of neutrinos, analogous to laser light emission, thereby enabling a new modality for neutrino detection and study. Such advancements underscore Jones’s commitment to visionary physics research.

The Experimental Physics Investigators initiative, launched in 2022 by the Moore Foundation, aims to foster a vibrant collaborative ecosystem among physicists at pivotal career stages. To date, it has awarded more than $77 million to 120 scientists across six cohorts. Its focus on inclusive research environments and team-building is intended to maximize innovative output and nurture the next generation of scientific discovery in physics.

The university supporting Jones, The University of Texas at Arlington, celebrates its 130th anniversary in 2025 and has positioned itself as a prominent public research institution. With over 42,700 students, UTA ranks as the second-largest university in the Texas system and is recognized as a Carnegie R-1 research institution. Its impact extends beyond academia, with an annual economic contribution nearing $28.8 billion to the state, underpinning the university’s role in fostering scientific and technological advancement.

In accepting this award, Jones highlighted the honor of being recognized by the Moore Foundation and expressed anticipation for the collaborative work ahead. He underscored the foundation’s importance in empowering researchers to explore bold, interdisciplinary approaches that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of fundamental physics phenomena such as the enigmatic neutrino.

News Publication Date:
2025

Web References:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/l3c1-yg2l

Keywords

Neutrinos, Particle physics, Subatomic particles, Experimental physics, Neutrinoless double beta decay, Neutrinoless double electron capture, Single-molecule fluorescence imaging, Nuclear physics, Chemical sensing, Instrumentation development