I am Matthias Hoek and I am a research scientist with the group since 2012. My primary interest is the development of detector systems for nuclear and hadron physics.
I began my studies of physics at the Justus-Liebig-University (JLU) Giessen in 1996. In 1999 I became a DESY summer student with the ZEUS experiment in Hamburg. For my diploma thesis I joined the group of Prof. Metag at the 2nd Physics Institute at the JLU Giessen. I investigated the use of lead tungstate (PbWO4) scintillating crystals for charged particles at medium energies. My diploma thesis can be found here.
For my PhD thesis I joined the group of Prof. Düren at the same institute and became a member of the HERMES experiment at DESY. My task was to design and build a scintillating fibre tracker for the HERMES Recoil Detector and analyse Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) on nuclear targets. My PhD thesis can be found here.
After completing my PhD in 2006 I became a Postdoc with the Nuclear Physics Group at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. I joined the PANDA collaboration and began to work on the characterization of radiation-hard radiator materials for DIRC detectors and fast multi-anode photo sensors (MCP-PMTs, MAPMTs). I also joined the R&D effort for a RICH detector for CLAS12 at Hall-B at JLAB investigating MAPMTs and determining the light yield of Aerogel tiles foreseen as radiator material. I was also a consultant for a project proposing to use scintillating fibre detectors for muon tomography of radioactive waste containers.
In 2012 I joined this group and continued to work on Cherenkov detectors. The first task was to design and test electronics for MCP-PMTs with a focus on fast timing for single photon signals. The same electronics design was then used for the Neutron Polarimeter for the A1 experiment at MAMI. The Neutron Polarimeter was built from 2016 onwards and took data in 2019. I also helped with the design and construction of the Neutron Polarimeter. In 2015 I also joined the Belle II experiment. For the pixel vertex detector (PXD) we organized irradiation tests of ASICs at MAMI using a dedicated operation mode of our accelerator. Furthermore, we tested the susceptability of the PXD power supply to neutrons in the A1 hall.
Scientific CV
| 1995 - 2001 | Physics studies at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen |
| 1999 | DESY summer student with the ZEUS experiment |
| 2000 - 2001 | Diploma in Physics at 2nd Institute of Physics, AG Metag, JLU Giessen |
| 2002 - 2006 | PhD in Physics at 2nd Institute of Physics, AG Düren, JLU Giessen |
| 2006 - 2012 | Postdoc with the Nuclear Physics Group at the University of Glasgow, Scotland |
| since 2012 | Research scientist at the Institute for Nuclear Physics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, AG Sfienti |
Research Interests
- Instrumentation
-
- Fast Photon Sensors
- Scintillation Counter
- PID Detectors
-