Research

Celebrating our students

Explore the ground-breaking work from previous REU students. Our brilliant cohort explored everything from physics education to resonant acoustics in liquid crystals.

Undergraduate Students in a JILA Lab

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"Our main goal is to educate our students by immersing them in an active research environment, which we believe is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain talented undergrads into careers in science and engineering. We put emphasis on selecting students who will be most impacted by participating in our program, such as students from non-R1 universities with limited research opportunities at their home institutions. Our program has been doing an excellent job in achieving our goals, as nearly all of our students go on to top graduate schools and other important technical or research-oriented positions in industry. We look forward to seeing these students make their own impacts on education, science, and society."

Professor Michael Litos, Director of Physics/JILA REU

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CL: Research list

New Trigger Studies for Emerging Jets for CMS Experiment

Guillermo Fidalgo Rodriquez(University of Puerto Rico—Mayaguez)Research Project Description.The failure to find a dark matter particle is a significant outstanding issue with the Standard Model. A recent theory for the origin of dark matter involves a dark (or hidden) sector in which an analogue to the strong force exists, which results in the creation of dark baryons and dark mesons. In this model, the LHC could produce dark quarks that hadronize into dark mesons with a relatively long lifetime. The signat...

Analysis of the pH Sensing Ability of Tubulin's Beta C-Terminal Tail by NMR Spectroscopy

Genesis Ferrer-Imbert(University of Puerto Rico—Mayaguez)Research Project Description.Proteins containing disordered domains perform many important cellular functions. My lab currently has two main projects, one to dissect the role of tubulin's C-terminal tail in microtubule structure and functions. The second focuses on selective transport through the nuclear pore complex. We are use microscopy, nuclear magentic resonance and other biophysical techniques complemented with modeling to approach these systems...

Second Harmonic Generation in Liquid Crystals

Diego Olaya(California Institute of Technology)Research Project Description.The optical properties of liquid crystals have been a subject of study for many years now, with previous papers investigating second harmonic generation in ferroelectric smectic liquid crystals being part of the literature since the 1990s. Many of these studies have mentioned the possibility of exploiting these properties for practical application but have consistently pointed out that there are still many questions to answer.  ...

Advancements in Sample Fabrication for Induced Room-Temperature Superconductivity

Britta Nordberg(Bethel University)Research Project Description:Abstract. Since their discovery, superconductors have had a broad range of application, including electronics, medical devices, engineering, and particle accelerators. The main barricade to their wide-spread utilization is the high price point required to keep superconductive materials below their transition temperatures. A major push in condensed matter physics has been to develop high temperature superconductors so that materials still maintai...

A Redesign and Analysis of the PhET Geometric Optics Simulation for Effective Science Education

Sarah Chang(Swarthmore College)Research Project Description.Geometric optics is a confusing subject for many physics students, who often first encounter the subject in introductory college physics classes. Traditional instruction in geometric optics is not as effective as using interactive simulations. PhET Interactive Simulations created a geometric optics Flash simulation in 2004, but modern browsers have eliminated support for Flash as of January 2021. We redesigned and redeveloped the simulation in Java...

Phase Behavior in Freely Suspended Films of Polar Liquid Crystals

Keith Hedlund(University of Colorado–Boulder)Research Project Description.Preliminary studies of the highly polar organic molecule DIO revealed a mysterious liquid crystal phase between the nematic and ferroelectric nematic phases. X-ray diffraction studies showed that this phase—dubbed the M2 phase—was both layered and highly tilted, suggesting the possibility of a new smectic phase. We report on studies of freely suspended films of this material in the M2 phase using reflected ligh microscopy and a variet...

Nanoantennas for Purcell Enhancement of Molecular Vibrations

Rajeep Singh(Rollins University)Research Project Description.Our understanding of the building blocks of the universe guides scientific advancements. This means that we must find ways to peek deeper and deeper into atoms and molecules. The Raschke Nano-Optics Groups aims to investigate materials at the nano-scale to understand the finer details by studying, for example, molecular vibrations. Specifically, the goal of this project is to explore how gold nano antennas can be used to enhance molecular vibratio...

Optical Plasma Diagnostics for Plasma Wakefield Accelerators

Jamie Boyd(University of Tulsa)Research Project Description.Plasma wakefield accelerators can provide energy gain of up to two orders of magnitude greater than conventional RF accelerators, making them a promising new technology for creating compact particle accelerators. Diagnostics for PWFA plasma sources are necessary to experimentally measure the plasma profile, which provides information that is essential for optimizing the plasma source and thereby generating high-quality accelerated electron bunches....

Silicon Pixel Detector: Temperature Sensor Calibration

Maria Tertulm(The College of New Jersey)Research Project Description.This research aims to calibrate the temperature sensors on the silicon pixel detector. The calibration of the temperature sensor is done to eliminate the discrepancy between the environmental temperature of the detector and the temperature provided by the read-out chip. To calibrate the temperature sensors, a graphical representation of the temperatures from both the detector and the environment is analyzed to find a correlation between th...

Electrostatic Dust Charging at Variable Pressures

Lanie McKinney(University of Oklahoma)Research Project Description.We investigate the domain of electrostatic dust charging at variable pressures for applications to dusty plasmas in various industries including space sciences and semiconductor manufacturing.  Back to research projects Access the Application

Structural and Physical Properties of Novel Transition Metal Oxides

Catherine Ryczek(Hamilton University)Research Project Description.In order for critical technologies to continue to advance, we will need to discover new materials that exhibit novel and traditionally unexpected properties. Transition metal compounds are particularly well situated to possess such qualities due to the unique quantum effects that are induced by their d-electrons. However, since the discovery of these effects, most of the research on transition metal materials has focused on the 3d-elements an...

Using Reinforcement Learning to Find the Optimal Quantum Adiabatic Short Cut

Livia Guttieres(University of Chicago)Research Project Description.We demonstrate the design of low entropy state schemes that increase coherent control in quantum evolution through laser cooling. To do so, we construct an example problem of high impulse lasers that mitigates the issue of incoherent jumps due to the structural noise of laser by evolving the system with an optimal evolution trajectory of the system to a desired target state. Our assertion is that such a shortcut optimizes energy conservation...

Electronic Transport Properties fo TbAuAl4Ge2

Roei Dery(Cornell University)Research Project Description.We present the first electron transport measurements of the crystal TbAuAl4Ge2. A magnetic ordering temperature in the 10–15 K regime is observed in a temperature sweep of resistivity and corroborates similar findings from magnetization data. Field sweeps from –7 to 7 T of the magnetoresistance and Hall resistivity are presented and display similar features as magnetization field sweeps. The Topological Hall Effect contribution to the Hall resistivit...

2D Pancakes of Ultracold KRb Molecules

Sam Cohen(Princeton University)Research Project Description.Ultracold polar molecules provide a promising platform for quantum simulation and studying quantum systems with long-range dipolar interactions. These dipolar interactions can be mapped to spin systems, the study of which could provide immense insights into various condensed matter systems. In addition to containing dipole moments that allow for long-range interactions, systems of ultracold molecules have long lifetimes when compared to other dipol...

CU Physics Department Specialties

  • Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics
  • Condensed Matter
  • Biophysics
  • Physics Education Research
  • Plasma Physics
  • Geophysics
  • Chemical Physics
  • Laser Physics
  • Renewable Energy