David C. Moore (physicist)

David C. Moore is an American experimental physicist and associate professor of physics at Yale University, where he is a member of Wright Laboratory and the Yale Quantum Institute. His research focuses on developing precision measurement technologies to search for physics beyond the Standard Model, including searches for neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter, new forces at microscopic distances, and neutrino detection using levitated optomechanical sensors.

Education and early career

Moore received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mathematics from Yale University in 2006, where he conducted undergraduate research on lattice QCD with George T. Fleming. He earned his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2012, working under the supervision of Sunil Golwala on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment. His doctoral work involved developing cryogenic detectors and analyzing data for dark matter searches, contributing to results that placed the most stringent constraints on weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) interactions at the time.

Moore was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the group of Giorgio Gratta, where he worked on the EXO-200 experiment and used optically levitated microspheres for precision force measurements. He joined the Yale faculty in 2016.

Levitated optomechanics and the SIMPLE/QuIPS experiments

Moore's group developed micron-scale force sensors using optically levitated microspheres and nanospheres in vacuum. The Search for new Interactions in a Microsphere Precision Levitation Experiment (SIMPLE) and its companion experiment QuIPS (Quantum Impulse from Particles in Spheres) use laser-trapped particles to detect forces as small as 10−21 N, with applications to searches for dark matter, tests of Newton's and Coulomb's laws at microscopic distances, and precision measurements approaching the quantum limit.

In 2024, Moore's group demonstrated detection of individual nuclear decays by embedding radioactive lead-212 atoms in a micron-sized silica sphere and measuring the sphere's recoil as alpha particles escape. The technique achieves sensitivity to accelerations as small as 10−7 g. This work was selected as one of Physics World{{'s}} Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2024 and a Highlight of the Year by Physics Magazine.

Moore's group has also used these sensors to perform direct searches for dark matter scattering, demonstrating that nanogram-scale optomechanical detectors can exceed the sensitivity of large underground detectors for certain classes of dark matter candidates.

Neutrinoless double beta decay

Moore is a member of the nEXO collaboration, which aims to search for neutrinoless double beta decay in xenon-136 with a sensitivity to half-lives up to 1028 years. He serves as the sub-system scientist for the nEXO photon sensors and has contributed to research and development on photon detectors and xenon capture from the atmosphere. Previously, he was a member of the EXO-200 experiment, which performed precision measurements of double beta decay in liquid xenon and published results in Nature and Physical Review Letters.

Other contributions

Moore has also proposed the use of trapped electrons and ions—technologies developed for quantum computing qubits—as particle detectors for dark matter and neutrino searches. During his doctoral work, he contributed to the development of position-sensitive phonon sensors for the SuperCDMS experiment. Earlier in his career, he conducted research in lattice QCD as an undergraduate at Yale.

Awards and honors

  • Physics World Top 10 Breakthrough of the Year (2024)
  • Physics Magazine Highlight of the Year (2024)
  • Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication or Research, Yale University (2022)
  • Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award in Experimental Particle Physics, American Physical Society (2013)