Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2005 APS March Meeting
Monday–Friday, March 21–25, 2005; Los Angeles, CA
Session D39: SPS Undergraduate Research II |
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Chair: Gary White, AIP Room: LACC 514 |
Monday, March 21, 2005 2:30PM - 2:42PM |
D39.00001: Detecting the Exoplanet Transits of HD 209458 and TrES-1 Tracey Wellington, Dr. Tom Michalik There has been great interest in recent years in exoplanets and the stars which they orbit. Exoplanets are planets which orbit stars other than the Sun. Since the first exoplanet discovery in 1995, professional and amateur astronomers alike have been searching for planetary systems outside our solar system in hopes of someday finding one similar to Earth. We observed the transit of two planets, HD 209458b and TrES-1b, across their stars. These transits were detected using a CCD camera in order to obtain a light curve, a graph of the star's magnitude versus time, for the transit. Extensive use of the telescope and CCD camera located at the Winfree Observatory at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, along with camera software and image processing software, was essential to obtaining the light curves. The resulting light curves were compared to those of other ovservers in order to confirm the accuracy of our results. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 2:42PM - 2:54PM |
D39.00002: High Resolution Phase Velocity Measurements in Gases E.M. Calleja, D.F. Carlson, S. Qi, J. Cancino, Y. Lee An acoustical path length modulation (PLM) method is currently being developed to measure phase velocity with a resolution of 1 ppm. Experimentally this is accomplished by forming a resonant cavity with a moving reflector attached to a piezoelectric bimorph. The change in the path length is determined by measuring capacitance between the (moving) electrode attached to the reflector and a fixed electrode. A 10 MHz x-cut quartz transducer generates the acoustical signal which is multiply reflected at the walls which define the cavity. The signal from the reflected wave is retrieved by the same transducer using a bridge type continuous wave spectrometer. This set up is essentially a Fabry-Perot interferometer for acoustical waves. Using the PLM method, it will be possible to measure the precursory affect of superfluid He$^{3}$ in the normal state, the so called fluctuation effect. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 2:54PM - 3:06PM |
D39.00003: Design of a Six Degree of Freedom Thrust Sensor for a Hybrid Rocket Tripp McGehee, Doug Woten, Ann Wright A hybrid rocket is composed of a solid fuel and a separate liquid or gaseous oxidizer. These rockets may be throttled like liquid rockets, are safer than solid rockets, and are much less complex than liquid rockets. However, hybrid rockets produce thrust oscillations that are not practical for large scale use. A lab scale hybrid rocket at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) Hybrid Rocket Facility is used to develop sensors to measure physical properties of hybrid rockets. Research is currently being conducted to design a six degree of freedom force sensor to measure the thrust and torque in all three spatial dimensions. The current design mounts the rocket in a rigid cage and connects the cage to a solid table by six sensor legs. The legs utilize strain gauges and a Wheatstone bridge to produce a voltage proportional to the force on the leg. A detailed description of the cage design and the design process will be given. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 3:06PM - 3:18PM |
D39.00004: Design of Force Sensor Leg for a Rocket Thrust Detector Douglas Woten, Tripp McGehee, Anne Wright A hybrid rocket is composed of a solid fuel and a separate liquid or gaseous oxidizer. These rockets may be throttled like liquid rockets, are safer than solid rockets, and are much less complex than liquid rockets. However, hybrid rockets produce thrust oscillations that are not practical for large scale use. A lab scale hybrid rocket at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) Hybrid Rocket Facility is used to develop sensors to measure physical properties of hybrid rockets.~ Research is currently being conducted to design a six degree of freedom force sensor to measure the thrust and torque in all three spacial dimensions.~ The detector design uses six force sensor legs.~ Each leg utilizes strain gauges and a Wheatstone bridge to produce a voltage propotional to the force on the leg. The leg was designed using the CAD software ProEngineer and ProMechanica. Computer models of the strains on the single leg will be presented. A prototype leg was built and was tested in an INSTRON and results will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 3:18PM - 3:30PM |
D39.00005: Large Ring Laser Gyroscopes for Geo\-physical Measurements Julie Coats, Robert Dunn Researchers at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Technical University of Munich in Munich, Germany, and Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas are engaged in a collaboration using large ring laser gyroscopes to measure geophysical phenomena. This presentation will focus on the contributions of Hendrix College to this collaboration. In an active ring laser gyroscope, coherent waves of light are propagated simultaneously around the laser cavity in both a clockwise and counterclockwise direction. A relatively small amount of light from each of the bi-directional waves is transmitted through the dielectric mirror. At one of the mirrors, the transmitted portions of the bi-directional waves are collimated and combined on a detector. If the laser cavity is rotating, the time for light to complete a path around the cavity depends on its direction of propagation. This difference in transit time creates a beat frequency proportional to the rotation rate. Geophysical effects are observed when they perturb the ring laser and modulate the beat frequency. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 3:30PM - 3:42PM |
D39.00006: Microscale Correlation of Rainfall Characteristics with Lightning Barret Viss, Arnold Sikkema It has been observed that it sometimes seems to rain harder a few seconds after a lightning strike (so-called ``rain gush lightning'' phenomenon). The conventional way to study this type of phenomena is with radar. To investigate this in a more direct way, an apparatus was designed and constructed which uses a digital video camera and a strobe light to monitor a region of rainfall near the ground. Individual frames have been examined and seen to be informative, and an image processing algorithm is being developed which will extract the data from every frame of the video clip. Besides its use for this particular investigation, the apparatus has proven useful in general, as it provides data for the specific diameter and velocity of every drop passing through the region. The standard measurement of rain flux can be derived from this data. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 3:42PM - 4:18PM |
D39.00007: An Analytical Overview of the Nucleus Jobsite Invited Speaker: Kibrom Tewolde An analysis was done on the \underline {Nucleus}, a student based jobsite for Physics students on its shortcomings as an effective summer job search engine. Surveys were used for this analysis targeting students, listed employers and new employers. The feedback gathered was then used to add new features to the jobsite and to increase its publicity. SPS members were also asked to submit information on their summer job experiences and provide contact information for their programs. These contacts were invited to add their programs on the Nucleus jobsite. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 4:18PM - 4:30PM |
D39.00008: Comparison of High-Energy Hadronic Shower Profiles Measured with Scintillation and Cerenkov Light Jafet Morales Results are presented of measurements of high-energy hadronic shower profiles measured in a copper-based fiber calorimeter. The calorimeter was equipped with a mixture of scintillating fibers and undoped (quartz or plastic) fibers. The latter measured Èerenkov light generated in the shower development process, whereas the scintillating fibers measured the energy deposit profile (dE/dx). Here, we present longitudinal shower profiles in the energy range 40-300 GeV for pions. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 4:30PM - 4:42PM |
D39.00009: Simulations of ion transport in T-shaped RF-Paul traps James Rabchuk, Jacob Burress Trapped Ion Quantum computers will require some or all of the ions involved in large-scale computations to be transported from trapping region to region. In particular, ions would need to be transported around corners. These ions must be moved deterministically without introducing any heating of the ions or unknown phase shifts in their internal, qubit states. The transfer rate of ions in a standard linear trap is limited by the allowed switching speeds of the electrode potentials. We have developed a classical model for predicting the ion motion for a given sequence of electrode potentials that results in deterministic transport of an ion from one trapping region to another. This model has been used to examine ion transport around the corner of T-shaped traps. We have also simulated the trapping, and then separation, of two ions in a T-shaped trap. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 4:42PM - 4:54PM |
D39.00010: Study Of Fe(x)Zn(1-x)F2 Using Ising Model and Optical Faraday Rotation Araceli Lopez-Garibay, Yvonne Rodriguez, David P. Belanger This study is to analyze the behavior of a diluted antiferromagnetic crystal, Fe(x)Zn(1-x)F2 with magnetic concentration x=0.40, under a magnetic field. Under a magnetic field we can analyze the phase transition critical behavior using the Random Field Ising Model (RFIM). The experiments will be done using the optical Faraday rotation (FR) technique with high precision thermometry. From the experimental results we will obtain a mapping of the phase diagram as well as hysteresis. The hysteresis is important to understand in detail since it is known to give very different results for field heating and field cooling procedures. Theory, simulations, and experiments on similar diluted antiferromagnetic crystals of different concentrations have been done. However, in this case, there is poor agreement between theory and simulations on the one hand and experiments on the other. Therefore, further fundamental experiments to probe the system behavior are needed. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 21, 2005 4:54PM - 5:06PM |
D39.00011: Quantum State and Process Tomography Matthew Krems, Daniel James A 4x4 density matrix completely describes the state of a two qubit system. Additionally, we can define the process of a two qubit “black box” by a 16x16 error correlation matrix. However, using experimental data directly often does not correspond to a physically legitimate matrix due to experimental noise. We have used numerical optimization techniques to make tomographic reconstructions of these matrices, which are related to the experimental data by a maximum likelihood function. We have developed and used various mathematical constructs as well as streamlined implementation procedures in Fortran. The errors of these matrices have been calculated and are pending further investigation. Quantum tomography is of fundamental importance for prototyping a few-qubit device. This work will be important for the potential design of a practical quantum computer. [Preview Abstract] |
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