Bio

Professor Young received his PhD in 1990 from Harvard University in experimental atomic physics. He spent 1990 to 1992 at the California Institute of Technology as a research associate in Felix Boehm’s group, and then moved to Princeton where he stayed for the next eight years, first as a research associate, then as a lecturer, and finally as an assistant professor from 1996 to 2000. He joined NC State University in 2000 as assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2001 and professor in 2005.

Area(s) of Expertise

He developed several different methods for optically orienting nuclei and participated in a variety of atomic, nuclear and particle physics experiments, typically to test some aspect of the standard electroweak theory of particle physics. He helped develop a prototype solid deuterium source of ultracold neutrons at Los Alamos that became the basis for a similar project at the PULSTAR reactor on the NC State University campus. He is a member of the American Physical Society.

Publications

• Characterization of low-energy ionization signals in silicon detectors for the Nab experiment , Physical Review C (2026)
• Environmental stabilization of perfect-crystal neutron interferometry using a large vacuum chamber with cryogenic sample access , Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment (2026)
• From Commissioning to Precision Data-Taking: Resolving Operational Challenges in the Nab Detector Systems , EPJ Web of Conferences (2026)
• Fundamental Physics with Pulsed Cold Neutrons , (2026)
• Neutron beta decay measurements with polarized neutrons and the Nab spectrometer , EPJ Web of Conferences (2026)
• New Interaction Search by Means of Small-Angle Neutron Scattering off Hydrogen-Storage Vanadium Nanoparticles , (2026)
• Dataset for First Full Dalitz Plot Measurement in Neutron β-Decay using the Nab Spectrometer and Implications for New Physics , DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Repository (2025)
• Measurement of the free neutron lifetime in a magneto-gravitational trap with in situ detection , Physical Review C (2025)
• Cerium doped yttrium aluminum perovskite scintillator as an absolute ultracold neutron detector , Review of Scientific Instruments (2024)
• Development of electron detectors for the BRAND experiment , Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment (2024)

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