Mazin Lab, led by Professor Ben Mazin, is a part of the Department of Physics at UCSB.  We are focused on using a unique detector technology called Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) for astronomy in the near infrared, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray. MKIDs allow us to determine the energy and arrival time of individual photons without read noise or dark current. The applications of this technology spans a wide range of vital research areas, including detecting Earth-like planets around nearby stars, untangling the emission mechanisms of pulsars, determining the redshift of billions of galaxies, and detecting dark matter.

Top Left: A 20,440 pixel Optical/near-IR MKID Array.  Top Right: On-sky  diffraction limited J-band image from DARKNESS without the coronagraph mask in the beam. Bottom Left:  A microscope image of a MKID.  Bottom Right: DARKNESS being mounted to the Palomar 200" Hale Telescope cass cage.

News:

April, 2018: DARKNESS commissioning paper published in PASP.  Press release here.

March, 2018: MEC is installed at the Subaru Telescope

August, 2017: Professor Ben Mazin has been awarded the Worster Chair in Experimental Physics

July, 2017: Graduate Student Clint Bockstiegel honored with the IEEE Council on Superconductivity Graduate Study Fellowship

May, 2017: 2017 Ph.D. Seth Meeker received a NASA NPP at JPL, but declined it for a JPL Staff Position

May, 2017: 2017 Ph.D. Paul Szypryt received a NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (NPP) at NIST Boulder

April, 2017: Graduate Student Nicholas Zobrist Awarded a prestigious NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF)

April 7-11, 2017: Third observing run with DARKNESS

March, 2017: Graduate Student Isabel Lipartito awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

November 19-23, 2017: Second obs. run with DARKNESS

July 21, 2016: First light of the DARKNESS camera!

March 19, 2015: Mazin’s CFA colloquium posted on youtube

Jun 12, 2014: Planet Finding camera MEC funded by Japan for SCExAO on Subaru

Nov 14, 2013: ARCONS in Gizmodo

Nov 11, 2013: ARCONS in Sky and Telescope

Nov 11, 2013: ARCONS in IEEE Spectrum

July 15, 2013: MKIDs in SPIE Newsroom

Office:  Broida Hall 2015H

Lab:  Broida Hall 3509

Phone/Fax: (805)893-3344

Shipping:

Department of Physics  

Bldg. 572 Room 1311          

University of California       

Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA