Steven W. Barwick

Picture of Steven W. Barwick
Professor, Physics & Astronomy
School of Physical Sciences
PH.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1986
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981
Phone: (949) 824-2626, 2646
Fax: (949) 824-2174
Email: sbarwick@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
3156 Frederick Reines Hall
Mail Code: 4575
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Cosmic rays, neutrino astro-physics, and ultra-highenergy (UHE) gamma ray astronomy
Academic Distinctions
Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education
Research Abstract
The Development of Neutrino Astronomy by developing the optical Cherenkov technique in two detectors: AMANDA and IceCube. Develop the radio neutrino technique using the ARIANNA and ANITA detectors. Current UCI Collaborators: Prof. Stuart Kleinfelder (Dept. of Electrical Engineering)

For most of my career, I have focused on the development of the technologies required to detect high energy neutrinos, and then my colleagues and I have used the new devices to search for sources of these novel and unique messengers. I am one of the few physicists who have worked on the detection of neutrinos with energies that differ by nine orders of magnitude; between 1011eV and 1016 eV with AMANDA and its successor IceCube, and between 1017 and 1019 eV (ARIANNA) and above 1019 using ANITA. If ANITA had detected an event, it may well have be the most energetic particle every detected. After more than two decades of effort to develop and improve the design of ice-Cherenkov neutrino telescopes, there are strong hints that IceCube has detected an unexplained diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos which provides the first evidence of astrophysical signal at these energies. If so, then we have witnessed a landmark event in the development of astronomical telescopes. This exciting possibility has earned IceCube “Breakthrough of the year” in 2013 from Physics World.

I served as Co-Spokesperson for AMANDA and currently the Principle Investigator for the ARIANNA ultra-high energy neutrino detector. I was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, and currently a member of the C4 commission on Cosmic Rays (and Astrophysics) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. In the past, I have served on the interagency astroparticle panel for the US Government called SAGENAP and I was a member of the decadal review for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Awards and Honors
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Antarctica Service Medal
Publications
Limits on the Antiproton/proton Ratio in the Cosmic Radiation from 100 MeV to 1580 MeV, M. H. Salamon et al., Astrophys. J., 349, 78 (1990).
Neutrino Astronomy on the 1 km2 scale, S. W. Barwick et al., J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 18, 225 (1992).
HEAT: High Energy Antimatter Telescope, D. Muller et al., Proceedings of the 22nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, p. 177.
Transparency of Antarctic Ice: First Results, S. W. Barwick et al., to appear in Proceedings of Workshop on High Energy Neutrino Astrophysics, p. 291.
Hardware design and Prototype Tests of the AMANDA Neutrino Detector, D. Lowder et al., Proceedings of the 23rd International Cosmic Ray Conference.
Professional Societies
American Physical Society
Last updated
04/16/2021