Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) are at the forefront of technology with their uses in
touch screen phones and televisions, solar cells and more. Titanium dioxide and tin dioxide are two TCOs that have been studied in depth on their own, so to further explore these TCOs, this project focuses on...
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) is an international collaboration that seeks to use perturbations in the time of arrivals of pulsar signals to detect gravitational waves in the nanohertz range of frequencies. The 15-year data set will be released as of June 2023. It is a...
Crystals are solid materials with periodic and symmetric molecular patterns. The structure of a crystalline solid determines its properties, making it essential to study its structures. From the principle of minimum energy, a crystal will choose a structure with the lowest free energy F = U – TS. At low...
Loop quantum gravity is a theoretical framework which aims to quantize general relativity. One of the unique aspects of this theory is that it imposes a discrete structure on space-time. One toy model of loop quantum gravity is loop quantum cosmology, which maintains the idea of a discrete spatial structure...
Brownian motion is the movement of a particle in a fluid resulting from collisions with surrounding molecules. It has modern applications in simulating fluid dynamics and the motion of proteins in biophysics. Brownian motion simulations generally evolve the initial state by applying Newton’s second law to every particle. These simulations...
Loop quantum gravity is a framework for quantizing general relativity which imposes a discrete structure on space. In exploring the structure of loop quantum gravity, researchers have investigated loop quantum cosmology, a toy model with reduced degrees of freedom while maintaining a discrete space. Polymer quantum mechanics is a framework...
Semiconductors serve an integral role in our technologies today. However, with new advancements in ultra-fast electronics, we are approaching the fundamental speed limits of traditional silicon-based semiconductors. Silicon-based semiconductors typically exhibit photocarrier dynamics in nanosecond timescales. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are 2D materials shown to exhibit photocarrier dynamics in picosecond...
Nuclear fusion reactors comprise a significant field of study due to their potential to provide a limitless, clean, and sustainable source of energy. The inertial electrostatic confinement fusor is a type of fusion-generating device that accelerates deuterium gas to the conditions required for fusion. The goal of this research was...
Organic semiconductors are a promising alternative to the traditional inorganic semiconductors, such as silicon. Organics are solution-processable, low-cost, sustainable, and have interesting optoelectronic properties. One such property is the formation of exciton-polaritons, quantum quasi-particles formed by an electron-hole pair in the semiconductor and a photon. This process can be induced...
Freshwater flux from the Greenland Ice Sheet has the capacity to affect regional and global circulation as well as contribute to sea level rise. Outlet glaciers are an important part of this process. They provide pathways for inland glaciers and ice sheets to melt and drain into the surrounding oceans....
With the unique conceptual and mathematical backgrounds of every introductory physics student, there is no way to design a rigid curriculum that anticipates and meets every student’s needs. We can employ machine learning to explore the correlations that exist in the voluminous data from educational settings. That is, institutional, gradebook,...
Computational statistical mechanics leans heavily on the class of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms. Many such algorithms exist, and simulations can run for several weeks, making the selection of algorithms a difficult, but critical task. In this work, we introduce a benchmark system of two quadratic wells with an analytical...
By studying gravitational waves, we can gain new insights into the merging events between massive objects such as black holes as well as neutron stars. Moreover, studying low-frequency waves allows us to observe merging events between supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, which in turn allows us to...
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) times periodic signals from pulsars as a method of detecting gravitational waves. NANOGrav detects waves emitted in the nanohertz frequency range, a range lower than those previously explored by other organizations. This allows for the study of rarely observed sources such...
Microtubules (MT) are highly dynamic cylindrical-like structures within cells whose growth is controlled by motor proteins, a class of biological machines that walk along the MT while simultaneously regulating MT growth. Here we are interested in the behavior of kinesin-14 motor proteins. Although processive behavior of kinesin-14 motors has been...
Ice-penetrating radar produces detailed images of the internal ice layers in a glacier. Because the layers form from each year's snowfall, the curving of the internal layers is a record of the climate conditions that the glacier experienced as it flowed throughout the millennia. The Hiawatha Glacier lies on top...
Electron behavior in semiconductor materials critically determines electronic applications. Previous research has shown carrier temperature higher than the lattice temperature of LEDs due to energy differences in the quantum well. Study of these findings requires a novel set-up to dig out weak signal in a thermal-noise filled environment; analytical methods...