Jimmy Kingston

My name is James (Jimmy) Kingston. I am 30 years old and live in New Haven, Connecticut. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University. My field of research is experimental particle physics: specifically, I am interested in the direct detection of dark matter.

My hobbies include fitness (with a focus in powerlifting, bodybuilding, and calisthenics), speedcubing, and listening to audiobooks.
I am also passionate about veganism. I want to show by example that it is a healthy and convenient lifestyle.

Professional Work

At Yale, I aim to construct a large (>100) array of levitated microspheres to search for dark matter that couples to normal matter via a long-range (i.e. much larger than atomic spacings) “fifth force”— a regime inaccessible to detectors sensitive to individual nuclear or electron recoils.

This summer (2026) I received my PhD in physics from the University of California, Davis. I conducted my thesis research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which culminated in the construction and testing of the world's first percent-level xenon-doped dual phase argon time projection chamber (TPC). A xenon-doped argon TPC could have unprecedented sensitivity to Weakly-Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter as well as be well-suited to study neutrino physics through the CoHerent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CE$\nu$NS) channel.

Book Reviews

Books Read in 2019
Books Read in 2020
Books Read in 2021

Fitness

Powerlifting Progress
Planche Progress

Software Tutorials

Selected Publications

  1. J. Kingston, J. Qi, J. Xu, E. Bernard, A. Tidball, A. Peck, N. Bowden, M. Tripathi, K. Ni, S. Westerdale, “Gas electroluminescence in a dual phase xenon-doped argon detector”, Phys. Rev. D 113, 032016 (February 2026)
  2. J. Xu, D. Adams, B. Lenardo, T. Pershing, R. Mannino, E. Bernard, J. Kingston, E. Mizrachi, J. Lin, R. Essig, V. Mozin, P. Kerr, A. Bernstein, M. Tripathi, “Search for the Migdal effect in liquid xenon with keV-level nuclear recoils”, Phys. Rev. D 109, L051101 (March 2024)
  3. E. Bernard, E. Mizrachi, J. Kingston, J. Xu, S. Pereverzev, T. Pershing, R. Smith, C. Prior, N. S. Bowden, A. Bernstein, C. Hall, E. Pantic, M. Tripathi, D. McKinsey, P. Barbeau, “Thermodynamic stability of xenon-doped liquid argon detectors”, Phys. Rev. C 108, 045503 (October 2023)
  4. T. Pershing, D. Naim, B. Lenardo, J. Xu, J. Kingston, E. Mizrachi, V. Mozin, P. Kerr, S. Pereverzev, A. Bernstein, M. Tripathi, “Calibrating the scintillation and ionization responses of xenon recoils for high-energy dark matter searches”, Phys. Rev. D 106, 052013 (September 2022)
  5. T. Pershing, J. Xu, E. Bernard, J. Kingston, E. Mizrachi, J. Brodsky, A. Razeto, P. Kachru, A. Bernstein, E. Pantic, I. Jovanovic, “Performance of Hamamatsu VUV4 SiPMs for detecting liquid argon scintillation”, JINST 17, P04017 (May 2022)
  6. B. G. Lenardo, J. Xu, S. Pereverzev, O. A. Akindele, D. Naim, J. Kingston, A. Bernstein, K. Kazkaz, M. Tripathi, C. Awe, L. Li, J. Runge, S. Hedges, P. An, P. S. Barbeau, “Low-energy physics reach of xenon detectors for nuclear-recoil-based dark matter and neutrino experiments”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 231106 (December 2019)
  7. J. Xu, S. Pereverzev, B. Lenardo, J. Kingston, D. Naim, A. Bernstein, K. Kazkaz, M. Tripathi, “Electron extraction efficiency study for dual-phase xenon dark matter experiments”, Phys. Rev. D 99, 103024 (May 2019)

CV (Updated May 2026)