My research sits at the intersection of two great fields: particle physics and astrophysics. I work to extract astrophysical information from large underground neutrino detectors — machines buried hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface, shielded from the constant cosmic-ray background that would drown out the faint signals we seek.
The central question driving this work: when the next nearby star collapses and explodes as a core-collapse supernova, will we be ready? A supernova releases roughly 1053 ergs of energy, of which 99% escapes as a burst of neutrinos — particles so elusive they pass through the entire Earth as if it weren’t there. That burst arrives at Earth hours before the visible light does. Which means, if we catch it, we have hours of warning.
Beyond supernovae, I also measure neutrino oscillations — the quantum-mechanical process by which neutrinos transform between their three “flavors” as they travel. This phenomenon proved that neutrinos have mass, overturning decades of standard model assumptions.
“You get the neutrinos before you get the light. It takes hours before you see the photons — depending on the type of star, it could take up to 12 hours for the photons to blast their way out of the dying star, but the neutrinos escape immediately.”
— Alec Habig
My group at UMD has active roles in data acquisition systems, detector design, oscillation analysis, and astrophysical triggering for several major international experiments. We collaborate with physicists across Japan, Italy, Canada, the UK, and across the United States.
The Supernova Early Warning System
SNEWS is a global network linking every major neutrino experiment on Earth. The moment two or more detectors simultaneously register an unusual burst of neutrinos, SNEWS automatically fires an alert to over 2,700 astronomers worldwide — giving them hours to point their telescopes before the light from the explosion arrives.
Co-founded with physicist Kate Scholberg (Duke University) in the late 1990s, SNEWS has never yet triggered — because no nearby supernova has occurred since 1987. Its upgraded version, SNEWS 2.0, adds richer multi-messenger capabilities for the modern era of gravitational wave and multi-wavelength astronomy.
A notable footnote: the original SNEWS code architecture was inspired by Netrek, a classic multiplayer space-combat game that Habig helped develop in the early 1990s. Elegant problem-solving rarely stays in one domain.
Key Research Questions
- What are the masses of the three neutrino mass states?
- Is there CP violation in the lepton sector — and could it explain why matter dominates the universe?
- What can a supernova neutrino burst teach us about stellar physics and exotic new particles?
- How do neutrinos interact with matter at energies relevant to long-baseline experiments?
