Physicist and Nikhef researcher Aart Heijboer has been appointed extraordinary professor at the University of Amsterdam effective October 1. Neutrino astronomy is his specialty.
Heijboer is attached to the KM3NeT experiment at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, which Nikhef is helping to build. With his (Vici) research group at Nikhef, he uses this detector to search for new sources of cosmic neutrinos. For some time he has also been physics coordinator of the large international KM3NeT research project.
Aart Heijboer studied physics at the University of Amsterdam, where he also received his doctorate. He did his PhD on trace reconstruction in the Antares neutrino telescope, a smaller predecessor of KM3NeT, also Nikhef and also at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.
KM3NeT will be the largest neutrino telescope in the northern hemisphere, situated in the deep sea near Toulon and Sardinia. The experiment consists of thousands of light-sensitive sensors attached to cables on the seafloor, which together observe one cubic kilometer of dark seawater.
Neutrinos are elementary particles with virtually no mass and almost no interaction with matter particles. Neutrinos traverse the universe en masse and also the Earth. The KM3NeT detector is large enough to observe about two impacts a day by causing light trails in seawater.
KM3NeT studies both the properties of the neutrinos themselves, and the sources in the sky where they come from. The project is still under construction, but has been able to publish initial measurements with several dozen lines.
Heijboer leads the Dutch neutrino astronomy analyses in Amsterdam at Nikhef. By detecting neutrinos from cosmic objects, such as the heavy black holes at the center of galaxies, he hopes to gain more insight into the functioning of these spectacular objects.
