Temple Physics Professor C. J. “Jeff” Martoff has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholars Award for the 2011-12 academic year. He will spend six months, beginning in January 2012, working on dark matter detection at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, as a guest of the University of Milan.

Martoff is part of the Darkside-50 Collaboration, led by Princeton University, which is developing a prototype detector for the dark matter, which although unseen, comprises up to 90 percent of the matter in the universe. In addition to Temple and Princeton, others institutions involved include the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Arizona State University, Augustana University, Black Hills State University, Fermilab, University of Houston, University of Notre Dame and UCLA, as well as the Italian universities of Milan, Genoa and Naples.

Martoff had previously pioneered a negative ion time projection chamber for the detection of dark matter. The Darkside prototype detector is a liquid argon time-projection chamber, which is being installed at Gran Sasso, a laboratory located nearly one mile beneath Gran Sasso Mountain.

“This is the best underground laboratory in the world,” he said.

Martoff said the earth is constantly being bombarded with high energy nuclear radiation called cosmic rays, which create radioactive background noise, making the detection of dark matter impossible on the earth’s surface.

“When you go to an underground lab such as Gran Sasso, you have more than a kilometer of rock between the detector and the cosmic rays at the earth’s surface,” he said.

Martoff said that following months of test runs at the surface in Princeton, N.J., the dark matter detection experiment has progressed to a point where the collaboration with the Italian groups needs to begin underground operations in Gran Sasso. Installation of the new detection equipment was slated to take place during the period that coincides with Martoff’s Fulbright leave.

“This award fit very well with the needs of the experiment,” he said.

Supported by two NSF grants, Martoff is building part of the new detector, which will be installed at Gran Sasso next spring. UCLA will also be providing hardware for the detector.

Although the Fulbright will cover his travel expenses in Italy for four months, Martoff said his host institution, the University of Milan, may support his stay for an additional two months.