Session M03: Student Poster Presentations (4:00-5:00pm ET)

Creating a Feminist and Queer Physics

The fields of Physics and Astronomy have a long history being dominated by white, straight, able-bodied, cisgender men. This track record directly affects the present and future, with a minority of physicists, astronomers and physics students from underrepresented backgrounds being heard or seen within these fields. In order to bring forth change, the structure of physics and astronomy, both environmentally and theoretically, must be questioned. This project aims to do this by exploring different knowledge systems, understanding the harm of colonial science and institutions of discrimination, noting the contributions (and lack thereof) from Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC), queer people, and women, and focusing on what introductory classrooms can do differently to make physics more accessible to students.   

Cultivating Ethical Reasoning in Physics: Emerging Themes from Student Reflections about the Thirty Meter Telescope Controversy

It is important for physics students to develop ethics knowledge, yet this is rarely taught in physics classes. We are addressing this limitation in our physics classes at Texas State University. Here, we focus on teaching about the ethics of building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii for an observational astrophysics class. We developed resources for students to make informed decisions about this complex issue. The unit encompasses an introduction of the TMT, a local perspective in San Marcos, a history of Hawaii, and perspectives about the TMT relative to formal ethical frameworks. We will present data from this unit in Spring 2020, including written reflections and video analysis from conversations during class. Our preliminary analysis of students' written work indicates that students experienced an increased understanding of the complexity of the issue, increased empathy with the protesters, and a desire for a compromise. Based on this and our ongoing video analysis, we will highlight what worked well in our design and what could be improved in order to support the community of physics educators and education researchers in teaching about ethics in physics classes.   

High-speed air can shield gravitons

Graviton is an imaginary particle that transmits gravity in physics, and it has not been found yet. High-speed air can or shield the graviton, so that the gravitational force between objects is reduced, and the phenomenon of relative reaction force appears. The wind speed inside the waterspout can exceed 200km/h. According to the theory of waterspout formation-a "vacuum" is formed inside the tornado and the waterspout is formed under the action of atmospheric pressure. The height of the water column of a waterspout should be about 10 meters, but what we have observed is that a tornado can support a water column of several hundred meters or even thousands of meters. Why? The high-speed air shields part of the gravitons and makes the water's gravity smaller. It is a waterspout that can form a water column much greater than 10 meters high.   

Simulations of Protons in the BL3 Experiment

The Beam Lifetime 3 (BL3) experiment at the National Institute of Standards and Technology aims to improve the precision of beam-type measurements of the neutron lifetime to resolve the 8.7 seconds difference (4 standard deviations) between beam-type and bottle-type measurements of the neutron lifetime. In the experiment, a neutron beam passes through a quasi-Penning trap, and decay protons are trapped electrostatically between electrodes at +800V and magnetically by an axial magnetic field that does not vary by more than 0.2\% of its average. When enough decay protons have accumulated, one side of the trap is opened and decay protons follow a bend in the magnetic field to a silicon detector. In this project, we studied the motion of protons moving around in the BL3 proton trap by running simulations in 'Kassiopeia' developed for the KATRIN experiment in Karlsruhe, Germany. We used SRIM (Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter) to study energy deposition, dead layer effects, and charge sharing in the proton detector. Combining results from these simulations from nanometer to meter scales will ascertain the performance parameters for the BL3 experiment.   

Identifying Photons From Long-lived Particles in the Atlas Detector

\sout{\textsc{WHILE INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL, THE STANDARD MODEL FAILS AT EXPLAINING SEVERAL KNOWN FEATURES OF THE UNIVERSE SUCH AS DARK MATTER AND THE HIERARCHY PROBLEM. ONE POSSIBLE EXPLANATION IS SUPERSYMMETRY, WHERE EACH OF THE CURRENTLY KNOWN PARTICLES HAS AT LEAST ONE SUPERSYMMETRIC PARTNER. DEPENDING ON THE PARAMETERS OF THE MODEL, CERTAIN SUPERSYMMETRIC PARTNERS THAT DECAY IN PART TO PHOTONS CAN REMAIN UNDETECTED BY THE ATLAS DETECTOR, WHILE LIVING LONG ENOUGH TO DECAY AWAY FROM THE PRIMARY INTERACTION. DUE TO THIS LONG-LIVED DECAY, THE PHOTONS LEAVE NON-STANDARD ENERGY DEPOSITS IN THE ATLAS DETECTOR AND AS SUCH LESS STRINGENT PHOTON IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS MUST BE USED. THIS POSTER DESCRIBES THE EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENT OF THESE LOOSER PHOTON REQUIREMENTS, HOW WELL MC SIMULATIONS DESCRIBE DATA, AND THE ASSOCIATED UNCERTAINTIES.}}   

Developing Tic Tac Toe {\&} Other Quantum Games for Hybrid Classical-Quantum Machine Learning Algorithms

Physics is used to resolve and understand some of today's most complex questions in nature. Quantum mechanics, the basis of all quantum physics, describes or attempts to explain the behavior of subatomic particles at the quantum level. A few resulting fundamental concepts are superposition- what Einstein called ``spooky action at a distance'', entanglement and interference. The emergence of the Quantum Age motivates all, from learning institutions to industries, to better understand and take advantage of these concepts to further quantum research, more specifically quantum computing, and ultimately quantum application in the future. A few research groups, such as Paul et. al. and Pal et.al., have utilized IBM circuits to demonstrate application of superposition and entanglement within their proposed quantum algorithms for programming quantum games. Utilizing the IBM Quantum Experience and framework as an experimental test bed, we further explore Tic Tac Toe as the foundation for other quantum, decision-based algorithms for quantum games to ultimately provide lasting, culturally relevant impacts in this new Quantum Age.   

Bell Tests On a Larger Scale and General Relativity Effects on Hyperentanglement

Entanglement is measured in a Bell Test, which puts a bound on the correlation between the states of two particles under a local-realist theory. We propose a Bell Test with a source halfway between the Earth and the Moon that would send a pair of entangled photons to a polarizer on the Moon and a polarizer on the Earth, the settings of which humans would adjust. At this large scale, humans would be space-like separated, meaning the decision on one side could not affect the photon’s measurement outcome on the other side. Moreover, humans could be given sufficient time to be presented with a choice, make a decision, and turn that decision into a polarizer setting after the entangled photons were sent. Taking Bell Tests to this large scale might better validate non-locality and perhaps, combined with the effects of relativity, reveal something new. Furthermore, we also propose generating and testing hyperentangled (entangled in both polarization and time) photons via an optical scheme in the Earth-LEO satellite scale. Hyperentanglement has never been brought to this large scale before, nor have the effects of relativity on it been tested. Our calculations show that the effect of general relativity on these hyperentangled particles is only non-negligible in the time-bin entanglement.   

Binomial coefficients and Arithmetic Progression in an Alternating Series with its interpretation in Vector Space

A series is defined using terms of arithmetic sequence taken along with binomial coefficients nCr. By deriving it in all the subsequent sections of Pascal's hexagon, the series is extended for nCr where n,r belong to R.Further, it is analysed in a vector space and is found to be a subspace of it. The series is studied as a scalar product of three-dimensional vectors where some of the findings are generalized for n-dimensions.