Matthew Bluteau has not looked back since he discovered that real events could be expressed with mathematical equations. That was in grade 9.

“It’s pretty amazing that we can take things that are happening in the real world and describe them with these little neat equations that are just written on paper,” he says now. “That for me was enlightening and beautiful.” When he came to Acadia from his Halifax home, his decision to major in physics began to open international doors.

In the summer of 2012, that decision took him to CERN [LINK: http://home.web.cern.ch/], the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland.

This fall, it’s taking him to the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, where he is entering the PhD program straight from his undergraduate BSc (Honours) at Acadia.

The search for dark matter

Before leaving for Scotland, Bluteau has spent the summer researching dark matter at Acadia. He’s working with another Acadia student, Shihao Wu, under the supervision of Dr. Svetlana Barkanova [LINK: http://physics.acadiau.ca/svetlana-barkanova.html], alongside two students at Memorial University. Also supervising the research is Memorial’s Dr. Aleksandrs Aleksejevs [LINK: http://www.hep-atlantic.ca/aleks/Dr._Aleksandrs_Aleksejevs/Welcome.html ].

“When we look at space, we can see gravitational effects on objects, such as stars, and we also look at the light from the whole spectrum coming from these objects,” Bluteau says.

From these observations, scientists can count the stars and estimate their mass.

“When we count up the number of stars we can see, and then compare it to the gravitational effects we observe, they don’t line up,” he explains. “And that’s how we know that there is more mass out there than we can actually see or account for.”

“Dark matter constitutes more than 80 per cent of the total matter in the universe,” adds Barkanova, “but it does not emit light, so it cannot be seen directly with telescopes. Apparently, dark matter is composed of some unknown type of subatomic particle. The students are calculating possible parameters of this hypothetical particle to make it easier to look for it at particle accelerators.” CERN in Europe is one accelerator facility. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the US is another, and soon it will start running at higher energies.

Dr. Svetlana Barkanova (centre) with physics students Matthew Bluteau (left) and Shihao Wu.

Winning a place at CERN

With encouragement and help from Barkanova, Bluteau successfully applied to the Institute of Particle Physics’ CERN Fellowship Program [LINK: http://www.ipp.ca/programs/CERN_summer.shtml] to spend nine weeks in Geneva in the summer of 2012. Only five undergraduate physics students from Canada are selected and funded each year.

While he was there, CERN made a major announcement. Researchers had discovered a new boson, or particle, that looked a lot like a Higgs boson [LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson].

“That was an opportune time to arrive there,” he says. “It was exciting for us [the summer students] to see modern science on this international scale getting so much media attention.”

This summer, Bluteau shared his CERN experiences with high-school students and their teachers.

“There were two different things I was doing this summer,” he says. “There was the dark matter research, but also I went around to high schools and was giving presentations on my research at CERN and on particle physics in general. It was an inspiring and enlightening experience.”

One-on-one learning

Bluteau appreciates the one-on-one environment in Acadia’s Physics Department. “It’s unavoidably personal,” he says, laughing. “In your department, you’re going to get to know your professors, no matter what. They are extremely accessible.”

Barkanova, who was his thesis advisor, is supportive of students and interested in their academic progression, he says: “She’s been amazing. She definitely went out of her way to ensure that I was successful in whatever I was trying to pursue.”

From Barkanova’s perspective, strong students are one reason she joined the Acadia faculty in 2003.

“It is a pleasure to teach them, and extremely satisfying to see how quickly they learn and grow,” she says. “We have a culture of excellence here at Acadia, and most of our students come from good schools and hit the ground running.”

Students who are not well prepared when they arrive receive help from their professors and their peers. They work hard and quickly catch on.

Barkanova is pleased with the students’ research this summer. “It looks like these four undergraduate students are going to make a real contribution to the international search for dark matter,” she says. “This is very exciting.”

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