David Phillips
Physicist, Smithonian Astrophysical Observatory, and QTC Collaborator
Ph.D. Physics, Harvard University, 1996
B.S. Physics, Caltech, 1988
David’s research interests center around: (i) Searches for planets around other stars in which he has developed instrumentation to improve searches for Earth-like exoplanets first by building “astro-combs”, laser frequency comb based wavelength calibrators for astrophysical spectrographs and then building a small solar telescope designed to observe the Sun as a Star and study the effects of stellar activity on the measured solar radial velcotiy; and (ii) searches for dark matter using novel detectors in which directional information about the potential dark matter interaction can be read out from a solid-state detector composed of diamond or other similar high-density or high-purity materials.
Fun Fact: David has visited Madagascar. Here, you can see lemurs climbing over him and eating out of his hands!
A paper on High-Precision Mapping of Diamond Crystal Strain Using Quantum Interferometry has been published in Physical Review Applied!
A paper on Scanning X-Ray Diffraction Microscopy for Diamond Quantum Sensing has been published in Physical Review Applied!
Notable Publications