Juan Pablo Yanez Garza, PhD

About

Research website link

• Associate Professor of Physics University of Alberta (2024 - present)
• Assistant Professor of Physics University of Alberta (2018 - 2024)
• Banting Fellow - University of Alberta (2016 - 2018)
• Postdoctoral Fellow - DESY-Zeuthen (2014-2016)
• PhD Experimental Physics - Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (2014)
• BSc Engineering Physics - Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (2009)

Research

Neutrinos physics. Member of IceCube and P-ONE. Special interest in neutrino oscillations, atmospheric neutrinos, physics beyond the Standard Model and novel detector technology.

Particle physics with IceCube

IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino telescope, located at the South Pole, capable of observing neutrino interactions across a very large energy range. At the highest energies, IceCube has established the existence of an astrophysical neutrino flux and has observed first indications of its origin. Towards the low-energy side, the DeepCore subarray has now collected the largest sample of atmospheric neutrinos ever recorded, using them to study neutrino oscillations in appearance and disappearance modes, sterile neutrinos and non-standard interactions. A major detector upgrade is being planned that will greatly improve the performance and potential of the experiment across all energies. The UofA is actively involved in DeepCore and upgrade activities.

Development of the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE)

P-ONE is a neutrino telescope project that aims to deploy an improved detector in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Vancouver Island. In P-ONE, I lead the development of a unique calibration system, the Muon In-Situ Tracker (MIST) for pointing calibration, entirely built in-house at the UofA. I also contribute to the development of tools for simulation to study the detector performance.

Data-driven Muon-calibrated neutrino flux (daemonflux)

 Together with A. Fedynitch, an expert in the field, we have been working on a new atmospheric neutrion flux model, calibrated with experimental muon spectrometer data. 

Hybrid Photodetector Development

This project is a collaboration with scientists from TRIUMF and Universite de Sherbrooke. Our objective is to develop a new type of photodetector for astroparticle physics experiments .At the UofA we are characterizing a key component of the new device and addressing a critical manufacturing challenge. 

For details or additional information on the research projects, send me an email.

Teaching

PHYS 372 - Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

PHYS 271 - Modern Physics

PHYS 292 - Experimental Physics for Engineers