Professor Derek Jackson Kimball Has Work Published in Prestigious Physics Journal
- August 31, 2015
A recent search for new force-carrying particles earned Cal State East Bay professor Derek Jackson Kimball and collaborators Shlomi Kotler and Roee Ozeri publication in "Physical Review Letters," considered one of the most prestigious physics journals in the world.
The paper, titled “Constraints on Exotic Dipole-Dipole Couplings between Electrons at the Micrometer Scale,” was the result of data compiled by Kotler and Ozeri and analyzed by Kimball, whose research focus is dark matter.
In the low-energy experiment, the scientists tested the magnetic interaction between two ions in a way that nobody had done before. They brought two electrons 2.4 micrometers apart and observed how they behaved at a distance much closer than ever before, looking for possible forces that have yet to be discovered.
They didn’t find any unusual behavior, but that is an important advancement in the study of dark matter, dark energy and unexplained phenomena, according to Kimball. Physicists know dark matter exists, but much of it remains a mystery, Kimball said.
“What we did confirms that physics behaves as we expect,” Kimball said. “We were able to show there were no new forces within the parameters of the experiment.”
Kotler and Ozeri are researchers with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo.