Nuclear reactors provide an abundant source of electron antineutrinos and enabled the first direct observation of the neutrino as well as provided evidence that neutrinos have mass. Past experiments have shown disagreement between the predicted and observed antineutrino flux from reactors. One explanation for this disagreement is the existence of “sterile” neutrinos — a new kind of matter with the same quantum numbers as neutrinos. The PROSPECT experiment is designed to observe these sterile neutrinos, if they exist as possibly indicated by previous experiments. PROSPECT is also designed to make a precision measurement of the spectrum of antineutrinos to further test such predictions.

David Jaffe earned a Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University in 1987. He held postdoctoral research appointments at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Florida State University, LAL Orsay in France, and the University of California, San Diego, before joining Brookhaven Lab in 2000 and receiving tenure in 2010. He was elected as the APS fellow in 2014 for his contribution in rare kaon decay experiment and the Daya Bay neutrino experiment.