Nick Wagner with Kathy KashLaser Trapping and CoolingThe use of lasers to trap and cool neutral atoms has attained temperatures in the millikelvin range. These cold atoms have allowed for high-resolution spectroscopy, increased the accuracy of atomic clocks, and are used to make Bose-Einstein condensates. We intend to build...
Academic Year
Matthew Truch with Daniel AkeribPerformance of a Cryogenic Particle Detector for a WIMP Dark Matter Search The nature of dark matter is currently one of the most important puzzles of Astrophysics. Big bang nucleosynthesis suggests that WB = 0 05 + 0 005, whereas WM is measured to be 0.35...
Eric Linton with Lawrence KraussConstraining Vacuum EnergyDistance measurements to Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) suggest that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing with time, contrary to previous beliefs about the evolution of the universe. One mechanism that could account for this acceleration is vacuum energy, also referred...
David Olson with Glenn StarkmanCosmology with Vacuum BubblesRecently, there has been much excitement in the cosmology community over the results coming from surveys of Type Ia supernovae. These surveys seem to indicate that the rate of expansion of the universe (as measured by the relationship between the redshifts of...
Mark Hartman with Cyrus TaylorUsing the AdSICFT Correspondence to Predict Particle Masses in QCDIn the last two years, string theorists have been scrutinizing the implications of the so-called AdS/CFT (Anti deSitter space / conformal field theory) correspondence, one consequence of which is a duality between certain gauge theories in 4...
John Chunko with Tanmay VachaspatiSingularities in General RelativityThe determination of the presence of singularities in a general spacetime can be a very difficult task, especially since many apparent singularities can be removed by an appropriate coordinate transformation on the spacetime. One is therefore led to the construction of a...
Michael Boss with Kathy KashInvestigation of Photonic Bandgap Structures Photonic crystals are structures involving 2 or more media arranged in such a way as to have 1, 2 or 3 dimensional symmetry. Due to the different dielectric constants of the varying materials, photonic bandgaps can arise in the material. These...
Elizabeth Hedrick with Glenn StarkmanSurvey Strategies for Discovery of Extrasolar Planets with a BOSSThe BOSS (Big Occulting Steerable Satellite) is a satellite designed to occult objects such as bright stars, in order to photograph the area around them. Among other uses, BOSS will be capable of revealing planets around other...
Jeff Kolthammer with Robert BrownExperimental Approach to Magnetic Field Confinement in a Dual-strip System There has appeared in literature a theoretical derivation of current conditions that lead to excellent magnetic-field confinement, called supershielding, in open-shield systems. A system consisting of two parallel, flat strips is used for illustration. We propose...
Robert Kraig with Philip TaylorA Kinetic Model of Phase Separation Induced by Photo-polymerizationUsing a molecular lattice to model a system of monomer and liquid crystal molecules, differential equations will be generated to describe the time behavior of the system when it is subjected to a light source With the incident...