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Scientist

Helen Quinn

1943–present · elementary particle physics, theoretical physics

American theoretical physicist of Australian origin, best known for the joint development with Roberto Peccei of the Peccei–Quinn symmetry, which solves the strong CP problem. She made significant contributions to the understanding of fundamental symmetry breaking, axion properties, and to science education.

Biography

Helen Rhoda Quinn was born in Australia in 1943. She received her PhD from Stanford University. She worked at Harvard University, SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). She was the first woman president of the American Physical Society (APS). She has received many awards for leadership and contributions to particle physics.

Key discoveries

Peccei–Quinn symmetry (1977) – postulates the existence of a new symmetry
the spontaneous breaking of which links strong CP conservation with the pseudoscalar axion field. Quinn also participated in establishing mass constraints on the axion (Quinn–Weinberg bounds). Contribution to the systematics of fermion masses and interaction hierarchies in the Standard Model.

💡 Helen Quinn loved mathematics from childhood, but initially thought she would become a school teacher. A turning point was meeting a famous physicist who convinced her to pursue research.

"She saw scientific questions as having no boundaries and the ability to ask them as a scientist's greatest gift."

Concepts

axion dark matter Standard Model

Scientists

Fritz Zwicky Vera Rubin Emilio Gino Segrè Paul Dirac Peter Higgs Richard Feynman J. J. Thomson Marie Curie

Related articles

Optics2024-11-293 minarXiv:2412.00271

A String That Never Goes Out of Tune: Higher Modes Hold Light in the Resonator

Tuning a string: higher harmonics help hold the pitch without drowning out the fundamental note. In an optical microcavity, a tiny resonator made of two mirrors, light bounces between the reflective surfaces, and any jitter in the spacing knocks it off resonance.

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Exoplanets2025-08-083 minarXiv:2508.06488

One in Three Sun-Like Stars Is Born with a Tilted Disk

A spinning top tilted over a table, with a dusty pancake swirling around it. That is what a young stellar system looks like when the star's spin axis and the plane of its protoplanetary disk do not align. Until recently, astronomers did not know how common such a configuration is in nature.

Lauren I. Biddle·Brendan P. Bowler·Marvin Morgan·Quang H. Tran·Ya-Lin Wu

David Charbonneau Didier Queloz Helen Quinn protoplanetary disk star formation exomoon

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Cosmology2025-09-112 minarXiv:2509.09472

Dark Matter Tuning Fork: How Axions Tune the Radio Sky

The ARCADE2 radiometer on a high-altitude balloon detected an excess radio emission, while the ground-based EDGES experiment found an anomalously deep trough in the hydrogen spectrum at 21 cm. Both signals do not fit the standard cosmological model and point to an unknown source of soft photons.

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Adam Riess Alan Guth Albert Einstein axion

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HEP Phenomenology2025-09-173 minarXiv:2509.14320

A Radio Receiver for the Whisper of an Invisible Field

Deep inside a cryostat, beneath layers of superconducting coils, lies a stack of hundreds of semiconductor layers. Each layer is just a few nanometers thick: gallium arsenide, then aluminum gallium arsenide. The electrons within these layers are confined to a plane, like ants on a sheet of paper.

Jaanita Mehrani·Tao Xu·Andrey Baydin·Michael J. Manfra·Henry O. Everitt·Andrew J. Long·Kuver Sinha·Junichiro Kono·Shengxi Huang

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HEP Experiment2025-12-161 minarXiv:2512.14110express

A New Record in the Search for Dark Matter

At the DESY lab, the ALPS II experiment was launched to hunt for axions — hypothetical ghost particles that might make up dark matter. This invisible mass acts like a skeleton, preventing galaxies from flying apart due to their spin.

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Soft Condensed Matter2026-01-012 minarXiv:2601.00313express

How a Sheet of Paper Decides to Wrinkle or Fold

A thin rubber film lies on a table. Someone grabs it by the middle and slowly pulls upward. The film doesn't just rise: it arches into a dome, then wrinkles run along the dome's edge, like pleats on a skirt. Pull higher — the wrinkles gather into large folds that cross the entire film. And if you start lowering it, the folds don't disappear but collapse into new shapes.

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Exoplanets2026-01-061 minarXiv:2601.02665express

The Stumbling Dance of Two Planets Around TOI-4495

Two planets around the star TOI-4495 perform a stumbling dance: while the inner one completes two laps, the outer manages just one. But the rhythm is off — the inner planet speeds up and slows down, like a partner stumbling in her steps. Using the transit method, watching as the planets briefly dim the star's light, astronomers weighed these worlds.

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HEP Phenomenology2026-01-081 minarXiv:2601.04576express

A Trap for Invisible Axions: A Magnetic Detector

Dark matter is five times more massive than ordinary matter, yet it emits no light. Its nature remains unknown. One candidate is the ultra-light axion particle. Axions could pierce right through the planet, barely noticing atoms.

Chunlong Li·Yiwei Huang·Shien Yang·Yichong Ren·Yu Zhang·Peiran Yin·Pu Huang·Fei Xue

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HEP Phenomenology2026-01-091 minarXiv:2601.05472express

A Trapped Electron Catches Dark Matter Particles

Dark matter doesn't emit or reflect light, yet its gravity holds galaxies together. What it's made of is a mystery. One leading candidate is the axion, an ultra-light particle. Searching for axions is like listening for a very faint radio signal, but the receiver's own noise gets in the way.

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HEP Experiment2026-01-131 minarXiv:2601.08140express

Invisible Particle Decays

In the BESIII detector, particles put on a show: they collide, are born, and decay, leaving flashes of light. But sometimes an actor can leave the stage unnoticed — through a hidden door that cameras don't see. Physicists were looking for exactly such 'quiet' decays, when a particle turns into something invisible to the instruments.

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Exoplanets2026-01-131 minarXiv:2601.08938express

How a Hole in a Disk Blocks the Light

Around a young star spins a flat pancake of gas and dust — the future building blocks of planets. The star heats it with ultraviolet radiation, and gas from the disk's surface escapes into space, like water from a puddle under the sun.

Michael L. Weber·Barbara Ercolano·Giovanni Picogna

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Exoplanets2026-01-142 minarXiv:2601.09438express

Three Teenage Planets Around Star TOI-451

The young star TOI-451 wobbles slightly as three planets circle it. Each wobble is like the tremor of a spiderweb when a tiny spider crawls across it. Astronomers caught this tremor to learn how heavy the planets are. They watched the star for several months using telescopes on Earth. The planets kept passing in front of the star, briefly dimming its light.

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Exoplanets2026-01-192 minarXiv:2601.13200express

Cosmic nurseries under fire

A young star is surrounded by a flat, rotating disk of gas and dust — the construction site for future planets. The disk lives its own life: gas flows toward the star, dust clumps together, and from outside, harsh ultraviolet light from neighboring hot stars presses down on it all, like wind blowing leaves off a path.

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Exoplanets2026-01-191 minarXiv:2601.13391express

How Planets Are Born: Turbulence in the Gas Disk

Around young stars, flat clouds of gas and dust swirl: these are the birthplaces of planets. For matter in such a disk to clump together, it must be constantly stirred. But what makes the gas move chaotically when it would otherwise be calm? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the gas in the disk barely conducts electricity: it is weakly ionized.

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Plasma Physics2026-01-222 minarXiv:2601.15567express

The Dense Dead End of Fusion

A fusion reactor is an attempt to hold a miniature sun in a magnetic cage. To get more energy out of it, you need to squeeze the plasma denser. But tokamaks have an invisible fence: once the density crosses a certain line, the plasma shudders and falls apart. This disruption is one of the main mysteries on the road to clean energy.

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Soft Condensed Matter2026-01-251 minarXiv:2601.17655express

How a Drop with Nanoparticles Cracks on Glass

A coffee drop on a table dries and leaves a ring — coffee particles gather at the edge. But if charged nanoparticles float in the drop, the picture becomes richer: the deposit cracks like mud in a dried-up puddle. Physicists studied how the particle charge and the surface on which the drop dries change these cracks.

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Quantum Physics2026-01-281 minarXiv:2601.20991express

Freezing the Moment: How Photons Stood Still for Precision

Light traveling through an optical fiber is like a runner in a narrow corridor: it can run straight, or it can weave from side to side. The direction of these "weaves" is polarization. Physicists have learned to keep the runner on a straight path: they constantly check its trajectory and gently correct it, not letting it veer off.

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HEP Experiment2026-01-282 minarXiv:2601.21074express

A Trap for the Invisible: An Array of Resonators

A pot on the stove rings when the water boils. An empty copper cup can also "ring"—at radio frequencies — if a dark matter particle is born inside it. These particles are called axions, and according to one hypothesis, they fill the entire galaxy as an invisible cloud.

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Geophysics2026-01-301 minarXiv:2601.22606express

Mars's Brain-Like Terrain Tells a Tale of Climate Shifts

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Exoplanets2026-01-302 minarXiv:2601.23069express

The Carbon Diet of Young Stars

Young stars are surrounded by disks of gas and dust, like construction sites for future planets. From this material, rocky worlds and gas giants will eventually assemble. So the chemical composition of the disk directly determines what the planets will be like.

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Optics2026-01-312 minarXiv:2602.00591express

A Ring That Lets Light Through

Terahertz radiation sits between microwaves and infrared light. It passes through clothing, paper, and plastic, but not through metal or water. That's why it's used in security scanners and medical imaging. To see the polarization of such radiation, you need a detector.

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HEP Phenomenology2026-02-011 minarXiv:2602.01010express

Hunting the Heavy Twin of the Top Quark

The top quark is the heaviest known building block of matter, but theory predicts a stealthy twin, the T-quark, which could be several times heavier. To coax it into the open, physicists collide protons with muons — the electron's unstable relatives.

Haroon Sagheer·M. Tayyab Javaid·Mudassar Hussain·M. Danial Farooq·Ijaz Ahmed·Jamil Muhammad

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Instrumentation2026-02-032 minarXiv:2602.03233express

Light That Gives Itself Away

Light from a star is not just a stream but a wave that can oscillate in different directions. Ordinary light is like a crowd where everyone waves their arms randomly. But after reflecting off dust grains or passing through a magnetic field, some waves align in a single line, like soldiers in a row.

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Exoplanets2026-02-031 minarXiv:2602.03393express

A Dancing Disk Around a Young Star

Around young stars, disks of gas and dust swirl: these are the construction sites for future planets. In the binary system HD 142527, such a disk is especially intriguing. Astronomers aimed three instruments working in the infrared range (thermal emission from dust) at it and saw a surprising picture.

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HEP Experiment2026-02-051 minarXiv:2602.05388express

Axion Hunt: False Alarm at 1 GHz

A metal resonator, chilled to near absolute zero, listens to the radio noise of the universe. Amid the chaos of thermal fluctuations and electronics, a faint peak might emerge — the trace of an axion, a particle that could make up dark matter.

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Plasma Physics2026-02-072 minarXiv:2602.07329express

Why Stellarators Don't Blow Up

In a tokamak, plasma is like a crowd on a narrow street: once someone starts running, everyone takes off at once. In a stellarator with a non-circular cross-section, the street is winding, with dead ends and pockets. The crowd can't gather into a single wave — people get stuck in different corners.

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Optics2026-02-072 minarXiv:2602.07657express

Polarization of Terahertz Waves: A New Compact Spectrometer

Terahertz radiation sits between microwaves and infrared light. It passes through clothing, paper, and plastic but is blocked by water and metal. That's why these waves are used in security scanners and for quality control of materials.

Redwan Ahmad·Charles Simard·Rejeena R Sebastian·Jonathan Lafreniere-Greig·Xavier Ropagnol·Francois Blanchard

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Exoplanets2026-02-131 minarXiv:2602.12522express

A Warm Pocket in a Cold Disk

The young star PDS 66 is surrounded by a flat disk of gas and dust — the cradle of future planets. In the cold outer regions of such a disk, silicon and sulfur are usually hidden inside dust grains, but astronomers spotted a bright patch of gas at about 60 astronomical units from the star.

Tomohiro C. Yoshida·Felipe Alarcón·Jaehan Bae·Myriam Benisty·Kiyoaki Doi·Stefano Facchini·Charles J. Law·Hideko Nomura·Laura Perez·Giovanni Rosotti·Yuhito Shibaike·Richard Teague·Takashi Tsukagoshi·Yoshihide Yamato

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Optics2026-02-161 minarXiv:2602.14459express

How Light Reveals the Fibers of Tissue

Inside our bodies, between cells, there is a support network — the extracellular matrix. It's like scaffolding made of proteins and carbohydrates that holds cells in place. When the fibers in this network change, it can be a sign of disease — for example, cancer or fibrosis. Usually, to see these fibers, tissue is cut into thin slices and stained with special dyes.

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Cosmology2026-02-171 minarXiv:2602.15611express

How to Catch an Invisible Shadow

Light from the star HD 163296 passes through the surrounding gas-and-dust disk like a flashlight beam through murky water. The disk's particles scatter the light, giving it a special property — polarization: the waves begin to oscillate in a single plane, like a rope shaken strictly up and down.

Kanako Narita·Tomohiro Fujita·Ryo Tazaki·Bunyo Hatsukade

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Exoplanets2026-02-171 minarXiv:2602.16030express

Cosmic Kitchen: How Carbon and Oxygen Shape the Look of Disks

When a chef prepares a dish, not only the proportions of ingredients matter but also their total amount. Two pies with the same sugar-to-flour ratio but made from different batch sizes will turn out differently. So it is with disks around young stars: carbon and oxygen are the key 'spices,' and their absolute amounts change the look of the cosmic 'kitchen' no less than their ratio.

Aditya M. Arabhavi·Inga Kamp·Ewine F. van Dishoeck·Peter Woitke·Christian Rab·Wing-Fai Thi·Till Kaeufer·Jayatee Kanwar·Benoît Tabone·Pacôme Esteve·Marissa Vlasblom

David Charbonneau Didier Queloz Helen Quinn protoplanetary disk Accretion disk organic molecules in space interstellar medium stellar evolution

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HEP Experiment2026-02-202 minarXiv:2602.18392express

Underground Hunt for Invisible Matter

Deep in the Italian Apennines, under a thick layer of rock, sits a crystal that catches every decay of radioactive americium. Americium emits gamma rays with an energy of 59.5 kiloelectronvolts, like a very sharp bell that always sounds the same.

Carlo Broggini·Giuseppe Di Carlo·Luca Di Luzio·Denise Piatti·Claudio Toni

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Exoplanets2026-02-232 minarXiv:2602.19941express

A Dust Ring Where Giants Are Born

Around the young star MWC 480, a flat disk of gas and dust whirls, like a giant carousel where, instead of horses, you have building blocks for planets. Radio telescopes peered into this disk at different wavelengths, from millimeter to centimeter, and saw exactly where the dust accumulates and how large the grains are.

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Exoplanets2026-02-231 minarXiv:2602.20346express

Cosmic Disks Flicker Like Candles

Around young stars, flat clouds of gas and dust swirl — the building material for future planets. Starlight reflects off these clouds, and astronomers see them as faint disks. But sometimes bright spots or dark bands appear in such disks. Fresh observations with the Subaru Telescope show these patterns can change within a matter of months.

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HEP Experiment2026-02-271 minarXiv:2602.24089express

The Invisible Arrow in Particle Decay

When an electron and a positron collide at the BESIII collider, they produce a short-lived particle — the charmed baryon Λc+. Inside it, like in an overstuffed box, another particle quickly emerges: the Λ hyperon. This hyperon has its own rotation, its spin, and physicists have for the first time been able to measure how much that rotation is aligned with the particle's direction of motion.

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q-bio.OT2026-03-013 minarXiv:2603.06657

The Two Leaks of Aging: Why Some Breakdowns Fix Themselves and Others Need a Specialist

In a house where people live, something is always breaking: a faucet drips, a door creaks, a light bulb burns out. The residents tighten the valve themselves, grease the hinges, screw in a new bulb. This is routine repair, it is visible, and you can do it with your own hands. But there are breakdowns of another kind: a crack in the foundation, corrosion inside a wall, a leak behind the drywall.

Tristan Barkman

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Stellar2026-03-062 minarXiv:2603.06230express

Weighing the Dust Around Young Stars

Dust grains in the disk around a young star stick together, grow, and will eventually become planets. But to know how much planet-building material each disk holds, you need to measure its mass and size. You can't weigh a distant cloud directly: you have to infer it from the dust's radiation.

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Quantum Gases2026-03-101 minarXiv:2603.09357express

Solitons on a Magnetic Rope

Magnetic waves in an ultracold gas behave like elastic cords. Two or three such cords can twist into a single knot that breathes: it contracts and expands, but never unravels. For the first time, scientists assembled such knots in the lab and confirmed that their breathing matches calculations exactly. The gas consisted of two atomic species that do not mix, like oil and water.

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Instrumentation and Detectors2026-03-101 minarXiv:2603.10146express

Neural Network Hears Polarization

In particle scattering experiments, the target is often polarized: nuclei are aligned so that their spins point predominantly in one direction. The degree of this alignment affects the collision outcomes.

Devin Seay·Ishara P. Fernando·Dustin Keller

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HEP Experiment2026-03-112 minarXiv:2603.10943express

Hunting the Invisible: How to Catch Axions

In deep cold, at a temperature just two degrees above absolute zero, a copper cavity the size of a saucepan listens to the silence of the universe.

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