Description: Design and operation of large-area particle and radiation detectors (noble liquid, silicon, scintillator).
Oberlack leads Mainz's contribution to the XENON/XENONnT dual-phase liquid-xenon dark-matter programme at Gran Sasso, covering detector instrumentation, ultra-low-background material screening, light and charge readout, and the associated rare-event analysis; the same detectors also probe neutrinoless double beta decay and coherent neutrino scattering. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), this is an astro-particle pivot: the shared discipline is single-quantum detection at absurd background rejection, and the group is a natural landing spot for a quantum-sensing postdoc interested in low-background readout electronics or in the growing overlap between quantum sensors and dark-matter searches.
Works on quantum-limited sensing for astroparticle physics. Directions: (1) Pierre Auger Observatory — UHE cosmic ray composition and spectrum via radio and fluorescence detection; (2) liquid argon dark matter detectors; (3) co-PI DARPA QuSeN (2025) — quantum sensing of neutrinos using phonon-coupled SC qubit sensors with Cleland and Chou. KICP member.
Astroparticle physicist working on IceCube and the HAWC gamma-ray observatory, developing detector instrumentation and analysis methods for very-high-energy astrophysics.
Experimental astroparticle physicist developing radio-based detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Directions: (1) HAWC — high-altitude water Cherenkov detector for gamma-ray and cosmic ray sensing; (2) IceTop surface array at IceCube for cosmic ray composition at the knee; (3) radio detection of cosmic-ray-induced air showers (Askaryan emission) as a technique for large-scale UHE cosmic ray sensing. Enrico Fermi Institute member.
Wurm's group builds and exploits large liquid-scintillator neutrino detectors, principally JUNO (reactor neutrinos, mass ordering) plus low-energy solar and geo-neutrino physics; work spans scintillator chemistry and optical purity, photosensor characterization, and reconstruction. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), included as a detector-instrumentation pivot -- the transferable content is ultra-low-noise photon counting and calibration at scale, not spin physics.