Research
Research Interests
My main research interests lie in particle and astroparticle physics, with a particular focus on the search for dark matter. Understanding the nature of dark matter remains one of the most fundamental open questions in modern physics and cosmology. Observations of the cosmic microwave background indicate that dark matter accounts for about 27 % of the total mass–energy content of the universe, yet its underlying identity is still unknown.
One of the most compelling hypotheses is that dark matter consists of new elementary particles—so-called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs)—arising from physics beyond the Standard Model. These hypothetical relic particles could have been produced through a thermal freeze-out mechanism in the early universe.
This mystery has motivated my long-term effort to search for WIMP dark matter using liquid-xenon detectors. Dual-phase (liquid–gas) xenon time-projection chambers (TPCs) have led the field of direct detection for more than a decade. Over my twenty years of work with this technology, the sensitivity to WIMP–nucleon interactions has improved by over six orders of magnitude, through projects from XNON10 to XENONnT, and the forthcoming XLZD experiment.
In parallel, I am also involved in the Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) experiment in Japan, which explores neutrino physics and proton-decay searches. Hyper-K is an enormous water Cherenkov detector, containing about 260,000 tons of ultra pure water in a cylindrical tank approximately 70 m in height and diameter, instrumented with around 20,000 high-sensitivity photomultiplier tubes (PMTs).
Together, these efforts aim to advance our understanding of the universe through the study of rare particles and the fundamental processes that govern it, bridging the frontiers of astroparticle physics.