Alex Murphy (academic)
Alex Murphy FRSE is a British nuclear and particle astrophysicist and a professor at the University of Edinburgh. His research includes the direct detection of dark matter and nuclear astrophysics, specifically the study of explosive stellar events.
Early life and education
Murphy obtained both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics from the University of Birmingham. He earned his doctorate in experimental nuclear physics under the supervision of Brian Fulton.Career
After completing his doctorate, Murphy conducted postdoctoral research at Ohio State University in the United States. His work there included the design of a supernova neutrino observatory and studies to determine astrophysical nuclear reaction rates, with contributions to the proposed OMNIS experiment.Murphy returned to the United Kingdom in 2001 and joined the faculty of the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer. In 2009, he became a Reader and later he was appointed Professor of Nuclear & Particle Astrophysics. In 2014, he became the Chair of Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics.
In 2015, Murphy chaired a review of UK astroparticle physics research for the Institute of Physics.
In 2021, Murphy served as a member of subpanel 9 in the Research Excellence Framework.
Research
Murphy's research is concentrated in two primary areas: dark matter detection and nuclear astrophysics.In dark matter research, he has participated in several international experiments. He led the University of Edinburgh's contribution to the ZEPLIN-III dark matter experiment, located in an underground laboratory in England, which searched for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle interactions. Subsequently, he and his research group joined the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment and its successor, LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ). At Edinburgh, Murphy co-leads a research group working on the LZ detector, which operates underground in South Dakota. His team's contributions to LZ include research on background neutrons and searches for alternative dark matter candidates, such as axions.
In nuclear astrophysics, Murphy investigates the nuclear processes in stellar explosions and element formation. He leads an experimental program at CERN to measure nuclear reaction rates relevant to core-collapse supernovae. The project involves using radioactive isotopes, extracted in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute, as targets in a particle beam to simulate conditions within a supernova. The analysis of reaction outcomes is used to study element formation. Murphy publishes on topics including stellar evolution simulations and experimental nuclear reaction data.