Frank Avignone III

Distinguished Professor

PSC 607
Physics and Astronomy
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
(803) 777-6933
avignone@sc.edu

Education

• Ph. D. in Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology (1965)
• M.S. in Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology (1962)
• B.S. in Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology (1960)

Research Interests

Experimental Elementary Particle Physics with present emphasis on neutrino oscillations, neutrino-nucleus cross sections, neutrinoless double beta decay, searches for cosmic dark matter candidates and solar axions.

Spokesman for the proposal to construct the Oak Ridge Laboratory for Neutrino Detectors (ORLaND) at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Member of the MINOS collaboration that is building a long baseline neutino oscillation experiment to detect neutrinos in the Souday Iron Mine in Minnesota tat cam from Ferilab in Batavia, IL. International coordinator of the IGEX⁷⁶GE double beta decay experiment, and the COSME dark matter search in the Canfrac Underground laboratory in northern Spain. All of these experiment are designed to answer fundemental questions in elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

The IGEX experiment is an international collaboration involving the University of South Carolina (USC), the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the University of Zaragoza (UZ), the Institute fro Nuclear Research (INR) Moscow, and the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), Moscow.

He was the spokesman of the now completed DENOS Cold Dark Matter Search and SOLAX search for solar axions in Argentina involving, USC, PNNL, UZ, and tha TANDAR Laboratory in Buenas Aires, Argentina.

Selected Publications

• "Theory for Direct Detection of Solar Axions by Coherent Primakoff Conversion in Germanium Detectors", R.J. Creswick, F.T. Avignone III, H.A. Farach, J.I. Collar, A.O. Gattone, S. Nussinov and K. Zioutas, Phys. Lett. B427 (1998) 235.
• "First IGEX⁷⁶Ge Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay Results", C.E. Aalseth, F.T. Avignone III, R.L. Brodzinski, J.I. Collar, E. Garcia, D. Gonzalez, F. Hasanbalg, W.K. Hensley, I.V. Kirpichnikov, A.A. Kilmenko, H.S. Miley, A. Morales, J. Morales, A. Ortiz de Solorzano, S.B. Osetrov, V.S. Pogosov, J. Piumedon, J.H. Reeves, A. Salinas, M.L. Sarsa, A.A. Smolnikov, A.S. Starostin, A.G. Tamanyan, A.A. Vasenko, S.I. Vasiliev, J.A. Villar, Phys. Rev C59, 2108 (1999)
• "Search for an Annual Modulatoin of Dark-Matter signals with a Germanium Spectrometer at the Sierra Grande Laboratory", D. Abriola, F. T. Avignone III, R. L. Brodzinski, J. I. Collar, D. E. DiGregorio, H. A. Farach, E. Garcia, A. O. Gattone, C. K. Guerard, F. Hasenbalg, H. Huck, H. S. Miley, A. Morales, J. Morales, A. Oritz-Solozano, J. Puimedon, J. H. Reeves, A. Salinas, M. L. Sarsa, J. A. Villar, Astroparticle Physics 10, 133 (1999).
• "ORLaND: A large Neutrino Detector Facility at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory", F. T. Avignone III, B. D. Anderson, S. Berridge, E. Bilpuch, W. M. Bugg, R. L. Burman, J. Busenitz, H. K. Carter, L. Chattrejee, A. K. Cochran, L. DeBrackeleer, Yu. V. Efemenko, M. A. Elaasar, A. R. Fazely, T. A. Gabriel, . R. Gould, V. Gudkov, R. Gunnasingha, E. L. Hart, T. Handler, R. L. Mezzacappa, F. Placil, A. Piepka, J. Reidy, C. Rosenfeld, D. Smith, I. Stancu, T. D. S. Stanislaus, R. Steinberg, R. Svoboda, R. Tashakkori, W. Tornow, G. VanDalen, J. W. Watson, J. Wolf, D. H. Wright, W. M. Zhang, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Prospectivesi n Nuclear Physics, Paradise Island, Bahamas.
• "A decommissioned LHC model magnet as an axion telescope", K. Zioutas, C.E. Aalseth, D. E. Abriola, F. T. Avignone III, R. L. Brodzinski, J. I. Collar, R. Creswick, D. E. Di Gregorio, H. Farach, A. O. Gattone, C. K. Guerand, F. Hasenbalg, M. Hasinoff, H. Huck, A. Liolios, H. S. Miley, A. Morales, J. Morales, D. Nikas, S. Nussinov, A. Ortiz, E. Savvidis, S. Scopel, J. A. Villar, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. in Phys. Research A425, 480 (1999).