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:
July, 2019: New Air and Space Magazine article on MKIDs
April, 2019: Graduate Student Jenny Smith awarded the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship
March, 2019: Watch Professor Mazin's presentation at the Amazon MARS conference
March, 2019: Graduate Student Alex Walter accepted a NASA Postdoctoral Progream (NPP) Fellowship at JPL
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 NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship
March, 2017: Graduate Student Isabel Lipartito awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
July 21, 2016: First light of the DARKNESS camera!
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
