About Us

The Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics (CENPA), is a DOE-funded Center of Excellence laboratory (Grant #DE-FG02-97ER41020) and Service Center located at the University of Washington Seattle campus.   CENPA is located at the North Physics Lab:  a 53,500-sq. ft. stand-alone facility that supports up to 100 faculty, staff, students, and visitors.

CENPA supports a broad program of experimental physics research in fundamental symmetries, neutrinos, muons, axions, and non-Newtonian gravitation.  CENPA is home to the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX), the Eöt-Wash suite of precision “tabletop” experiments, the unique Project-8 measurement of the neutrino mass, and a precision measurement of the He-6 beta decay spectrum using our 9-MV Tandem Van de Graaff Accelerator. The latter two experiments are exploiting a unique and new technique called cyclotron resonance emission spectroscopy (CRES).

A major portion of our program is also devoted to experiments that are carried out eternally at accelerator or underground laboratory facilities.  These include the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab, the PIONEER rare pion decay program at the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute, the DAMIC dark matter experiment at Modane in France, the LEGEND neutrinoless double beta decay experiment at the LNGS underground lab in Italy, and the KATRIN direct measurement of the neutrino mass at the at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Reading our current Annual Report will provide a detailed overview of our most recent activities.


Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

CENPA is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. We value all members in our communites equally without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, genetic information, gender identity or expression, age, disability, or veteran status.

Commitment to Diversity

CENPA is committed to building diversity among its faculty, librarian, staff, and student communities, and articulates that commitment in the UW Diversity Blueprint (http://www.washington.edu/diversity/diversity-blueprint/). Additionally, the University’s Faculty Code recognizes faculty efforts in research, teaching and/or service that address diversity and equal opportunity as important contributions to a faculty member’s academic profile and responsibilities (https://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/FCG/FCCH24.html#2432).