Skip to main content

Stephane Coutu

Stephane Coutu — Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics — Faculty
Office: 303H Osmond Laboratory
Address: 0104 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 US
sxc56@psu.edu
+1 814 865 2015
Stephane Coutu
Astronomy Physics HELIX AMON Cosmic Rays Multimessenger Astrophysics CMA

Stephane Coutu has been working in experimental particle astrophysics for over 30 years, investigating Nature's highest energy phenomena by studying cosmic rays. These are cosmic messengers, atomic nuclei, electrons, gamma rays, neutrinos, and even antimatter particles from extreme environments in the Galaxy and beyond, such as shock waves from supernova blasts or accretion disks onto supermassive black holes at the center of distant radio galaxies. Coutu worked on the DoE MACRO experiment looking for magnetic monopoles under a mountain in central Italy, on the NASA HEAT balloon experiments measuring positrons and antiprotons at the top of the atmosphere in New Mexico and Northern Canada, on the NASA CREAM series of balloon missions in Antarctica to detect and map out high-energy nuclei, and on the NSF Pierre Auger Observatory project deployed over an area the size of Rhode Island in western Argentina, detecting the most energetic particles in the Universe today. In mid-August 2017 he and his team launched the ISS-CREAM instrument, on the SpaceX 12 rocket and it was installed on the International Space Station to make new measurements of cosmic-ray nuclei from hydrogen to iron. He is involved with a new NASA balloon project, HELIX, planning to measure cosmic-ray isotopes over Antarctica, and is planning a space mission to study super-heavy cosmic rays. Coutu has been on the Penn State faculty since 1997 and is now a professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics there. He was a recipient of the 2001 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Publications
  1. H. Ayala Solares, et. Coutu “Multimessenger Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Coincidence Alerts Using HAWC and IceCube Subthreshold Data.” 906 1 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abcaa4
  2. Hugo Ayala Solares, Stephane Coutu, D. Cowen, James DeLaunay, Derek Fox, Azadeh Keivani, Miguel Mostafá, Kohta Murase, Foteini Oikonomou, Monica Seglar-Arroyo, Gordana Tešić, Colin Turley “The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON): Performance and science program.” Astroparticle Physics 114 (2020) doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2019.06.007

Stephane Coutu's research group

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Heather Allen Heather Allen Graduate Student Physics heather.allen@psu.edu --- 204 Osmond Laboratory CMA, IGC Cosmic Rays, Multimessenger Astrophysics
Yu Chen Yu Chen Graduate Student Physics yuc357@psu.edu 205 Osmond Laboratory CMA Cosmic Rays
Shujin Cheng Shujin Cheng Graduate Student svc6640@psu.edu 8142803428 113 Osmond Laboratory IGC
About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.