Ronald Phaneuf

Ronald Arthur Phaneuf died peacefully at his home in Colorado on 14 April 2023. Ron was a prized colleague in physics and a wonderful partner in all of his endeavors. He always did more than his share skillfully and cheerfully. His physics and his home-brewed beer were always first rate.

Ron was born on 26 January 1947 in Canada, where he was schooled and played hockey. At the University of Windsor he earned a bachelor’s degree in honors physics in 1969, a master’s degree in 1970, and a doctorate in experimental atomic physics in 1973. As recipient of a National Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral fellowship for study abroad, he joined the research group of Gordon Dunn at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) in Boulder, Colorado, in 1973. There he was introduced to research with interacting charged particle beams that would inspire his future research career.

In 1975 he joined the research program led by Clarence Barnett at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With David Crandall he helped to establish a decades-long collaboration with JILA to study excitation and ionization in collisions of electrons with multiply charged ions using crossed and merged beams. In collaboration with Fred Meyer on the electron cyclotron resonance ion source and Charles Havener on merged beams, Ron extended and developed interacting beams of electrons, ions, and atoms, allowing measurements of isolated fundamental physics properties. For example, merged beams of highly charged ions with atomic hydrogen enabled cross section measurement for electron capture near thermal energies and orbiting of the particles that had been predicted in such slow collisions.

In 1983 he succeeded Crandall as research program manager for Atomic Physics and Plasma Diagnostics Development for Fusion Energy and of the Controlled Fusion Atomic Data Center with close ties to the International Atomic Energy Agency. After becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1987, he held a top-secret Q security clearance from the Department of Energy.

Ron left Oak Ridge in 1992 to join the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) as professor and chair of the physics department, with a mission to significantly expand the research program there. During that period he would oversee the recruiting of faculty with expertise in experimental and theoretical atomic, molecular, chemical, plasma, and materials physics and support establishment of the Nevada Terawatt Facility. He developed a multi-charged ion research laboratory at UNR and additionally led the development of an ion-photon merged-beams research end station to study photoionization of multiply charged ions with synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That multi-user facility enabled a decades-long collaboration with the research group of Alfred Müller and Stefan Schippers at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. A highlight was the experimental demonstration of confinement resonances that were predicted in photoionization of a xenon atom confined within a fullerene molecular cage.

In addition to teaching and directing research projects of numerous PhD and MS candidates and postdoctoral fellows, Ron served as statewide director of the Nevada EPSCOR program of DOE and was active in faculty governance, serving on the UNR Faculty Senate Executive Board during a critical period. He was elected secretary-treasurer of the Division of Atomic and Molecular Physics of the American Physical Society, gained fellowship in that organization, and was named an outstanding referee. He further supported his discipline as a member of the Committee on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Science of the National Academy of Sciences and of proposal review panels of the National Research Council, DOE, and ALS. Professional honors included the Humboldt Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to advance collaboration with the Giessen group and a Foundation Professorship at UNR. Ron retired from UNR as professor emeritus in 2013 and is coauthor of 205 refereed physics research publications that have been cited more than 4600 times.

Ron was a reluctant but highly effective administrator who was most admired as a physics leader with passion for accuracy and completeness in his atomic physics measurements. The advanced techniques that he pioneered enabled success for his passions with fundamental atomic collision data and observation of individual complex phenomena that occur more integrated in many physical systems. Those of us honored to collaborate with him never knew a better partner. He is survived by his wife Jimmie Benedict, family members, and highly appreciative friends.

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