The American Physical Society has awarded Fermilab scientist and Northwestern University Assistant Professor Eric Dahl the 2018 Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics. He received the honor for fundamental contributions to the development of new techniques for the direct detection of dark matter, including the bubble chamber and xenon time projection chamber.
The Primakoff Award, established in 2011, is given in recognition of outstanding contributions made by physicists who are just beginning their careers and to help promote the careers of exceptionally promising young physicists. The prize is given annually and consists of $1,500 and a certificate citing the contributions of the recipient, plus an allowance for travel to an APS meeting to receive the award and deliver an invited lecture.
Currently a member of the PICO and LZ collaborations, Dahl’s focus is on the detector physics and background discrimination methods that make a future dark matter discovery possible. This focus led him to the development of the scintillating bubble chamber, a fusion of these two technologies with the potential to surpass either as a tool for dark matter detection and the study of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. He is a recipient of the 2014 DOE Early Career Research Award.