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Field builds high-altitude and space instruments toward the indirect detection of dark matter. Her focus is in opening sensitivity to clean cosmic-ray antimatter signatures of dark matter by advancing instrumental techniques. Low-energy (~100-250 GeV/n) cosmic-ray antideuterons would be a smoking gun for dark matter, since the predicted flux from dark matter is orders of magnitude larger than the astrophysical background. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is an Antarctic long-duration balloon mission and the first experiment optimized for detection of this rare dark matter signal. Meanwhile, a long-observed excess of 511 keV gamma rays has long been attributed to an unknown source of low-energy positrons in the Galaxy. This positron annihilation signal could be the first indirect detection of the Galactic dark matter, but its origin remains unclear due to limited observing sensitivity in the MeV. The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA Small Explorers (SMEX) mission will provide unprecedented sensitivity at 511 keV, toward revealing the origin of the Galactic positrons.
Field received her PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her BS in physics from Yale University.