Fruth is an experimentalist on LZ, the world-leading liquid-xenon dark matter experiment, and works on the detector-physics end: electron and single-photon backgrounds, calibration, and the characterisation of the anomalous low-energy events that currently limit sensitivity at the bottom of the energy spectrum. The programme is a pure exercise in pushing a detector's noise floor down until it is limited by irreducible physics (the neutrino fog). Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — dark matter detection and NV-ensemble magnetometry are the same problem in different clothing — an exquisitely quiet detector, a signal below the background, and a systematics budget that determines everything — and the quantum-sensing community is increasingly supplying the readout technology (quantum-limited amplifiers, single-photon counters) that these experiments now need. Early-career PI.

McKinsey develops ultra-low-background noble-liquid (xenon and argon) time-projection chambers for direct dark matter detection, including leadership roles on LZ, and works on quantum-sensor readout of scintillation and ionization signals to push detection thresholds toward single-quantum sensitivity.

Wittweg works on the XENONnT liquid-xenon dark matter experiment, focusing on detector calibration, low-background techniques and rare-event/dark-matter analyses; recently joined Imperial and is establishing a new noble-liquid detector research programme.