Berkeley Physics is proud to announce the Physics Innovators Initiative (Pi2) Scholars for Summer, 2024
These undergraduates will have the opportunity to do research, learn to design the tools that enable such research, develop their scientific independence, and realize their potential as physicists. Each Pi2 scholar will work closely with dedicated graduate student and/or postdoc mentors on their projects. Pi2 Scholars will also participate in a number of activities with their cohorts which could include lectures, roundtable discussions, and hiking excursions. Final projects will require a written report and a poster presentation open to the whole department at the end of the summer. Meet our Pi2 Summer Scholars and their mentors below!
Nishank Gite and mentor Johannes Wagner
Identifying jets containing charm or bottom using machine learning
Many measurements of Higgs boson properties at the LHC rely on the ability to select with high efficiency and purity samples containing jets of particles containing charm or bottom (aka heavy flavor) decay products. The goal of this project is to modify a state-of-the-art machine-learning (ML) algorithm and apply it to columnated jets of charged particles, identifying those that contain heavy flavor. This work will extend the algorithm's use to an unexplored region of phase space. The student researcher will train the ML algorithm using simulated data and then calibrate the output using proton-proton collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Nishank will work as part of the Marjorie Shapiro group and the Heather Gray group and will be mentored by graduate student Johannes Wagner.
Celine Tan and mentor Matthew Tao
Construction of High-Powered Tapered Amplifier and Characterization of Electromagnets and Vibrations
Lattice Atom interferometry is a novel precision measurement technique that has shown great promise as a tool for probing the fundamental nature of gravity. These experiments have complex technical problems to tackle involving, mechanical, electrical, and optical equipment to maintain and operate. The goal of this project will be to construct and test a high-powered tapered amplifier for ultracold atomic physics manipulation. The student will also be involved in testing and characterizing an electromagnet and a vibration isolation system that will be essential upgrades to a new experimental apparatus.
Celine will work as part of the Holger Müller group and will be mentored by graduate student Matthew Tao.
Mito Funatsu and mentor Beatrice Liang-Gilman
Charged particle trajectory measurements at the future EIC
We are currently developing an experiment, called ePIC, for the future electron ion collider (EIC). One crucial measurement is the trajectory of charged particles in the magnet, in order to reconstruct their momentum. At Berkeley, we are developing the track reconstruction software to properly reconstruct the trajectory of particles in the silicon pixel tracking detector. This project will involve studying how the track reconstruction performs, particularly when detector noise and background are incorporated, to ensure the quality and reliability of our reconstruction. By looking at simulated e+p deep inelastic scattering events we will quantify the tracking performance and specify the acceptable levels of electronic noise.
Mito will work as part of the Barbara Jacak group and will be mentored by graduate student Beatrice Liang-Gilman.
Bennet Christiansen and mentor Jack Dolde
Frequency stabilizing a Rydberg laser in order to spin-squeeze an optical lattice clock
Optical lattice atomic clocks are the most precise timekeeping devices constructed by human-kind, and in some cases they already operate at the "standard quantum limit" for atomic clock performance. Quantum entanglement between the atoms in the clock in the form of "spin-squeezing" provides a way to bypass this limit and achieve even higher performance. One method of generating spin-squeezing is Rydberg dressing, which requires a short wavelength laser to address high energy atomic states. In order to ensure this laser maintains a stable frequency and narrow linewidth, we will reference this laser to an ultra-low expansion (ULE) cavity using a Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) locking technique. We will then characterize the locked laser’s performance in our experimental implementation of Rydberg dressed spin squeezing.
Bennet will work as part of the Shimon Kolkowitz group and will be mentored by graduate student Jack Dolde.
Adarsh Iyer and mentor Sajant Anand
Multi-product formulas for quantum time evolution with tensor networks
One of the fundamental tasks in quantum computation and many-body physics is to evolve a state under the dynamics specified by the system's Hamiltonian. Typically, one "trotterizes" the Hamiltonian so that evolution of the entire state can be performed as a sequence of few-body terms. However, traditional approaches require taking a large number of evolution steps to perform the evolution with the desired accuracy and thus are infeasible for both classical simulatos and quantum devices. Multi-product formulas (MPF), where time evolution is performed by a linear combination of unitary gates rather than a product of gates, have recently been proposed as an more efficient alternative to standard Trotterization, but primarily in the context of experimental quantum devices and measurable quantities. In this project, we will investigate the applicability of MPF for classical simulation of quantum dynamics, using tensor networks to represent the evolved quantum state. Tensor networks are an incredibly powerful tool to represent quantum states, especially in 1 dimension, and are commonly used to study quantum dynamics, yet simulating time evolution accurately to late time via Trotterization requires substantial resources. The student will first understand basic tensor network time evolution methods and then compare the accuracy of MPFs to Trotterization, using toy models where the quantum dynamics can be solved analytically as a benchmark.
Adarsh will work as part of the Mike Zaletel group and will be mentored by graduate student Sajant Anand.
Leo Li and mentor Joseph Slivka
Dissecting how Heterogeneous Microtubule Associated Proteins (MAPs) Modify Kinesin Motility
Kinesin-1, henceforth kinesin, is the most ubiquitous kinesin biomolecular motor that consumes ATP to produce mechanical work on the nanometer scale. Kinesin is fundamental in transporting, sorting, and delivering organelles along networks of microtubules (MTs) in human cells. Failures of this transportation system can cause severe neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. However, we know little about how kinesin-1's motility is regulated. One hypothesis suggests that different densities of microtubule associated proteins (coincidentally known as MAPs) could direct kinesin. We will directly test this MAP-code hypothesis by both experiments and models. With single-molecule in vitro microscopy, we will observe kinesin trajectories on MTs coated with different densities of MAPs. Simultaneously, we will develop kinetic simulations to dissect how kinesin is regulated by “cell-like” conditions of MAP-coated MTs.
Leo will work as part of the Ahmet Yildiz group and will be mentored by graduate student Joseph Slivka.
Kai Suwandi and mentor Nicolette Puskar
Attosecond Dynamics with Soft X-rays
With the natural timescale of electron dynamics being in the attosecond regime (one attosecond is one billion billionth of a second), attosecond-duration laser pulses provide the required time resolution to probe electronic decay dynamics such as autoionization and Auger-Meitner decay. This project aims to incorporate a tunable Optical Parametric Amplifier as the driver to produce X-ray photons that have attosecond pulse durations. These pulses will then be used for time-domain investigations of ultrafast relaxation processes to provide critical insights into the role of electron correlation that causes the decay of atomic excited states. A first target system is the lifetime of the Argon L3-edge 2p54s state at 244 eV, which is expected to be around 5 fs. The student involved in this project will operate the master laser and the optical parametric amplifier, incorporate additional compression optics to shorten the pulses to few-cycle durations, produce X-ray pulses with the requisite properties for the experimental measurements, and participate in the measurements.
Kai will work as part of the Stephen Leone group and will be mentored by graduate student Nicolette Puskar.
Kenneth Ng and mentor Ruishi Qi
Exciton Bose-Einstein condensate in two-dimensional heterostructures
Two-dimensional atomically thin semiconductors allows for the creation of long-lived bound electron-hole pairs, known as excitons. The exciton are light bosonic particle that could form high-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate. The project aims to realize and characterize such exciton Bose-Einstein condensate in two-dimensional materials.
Kenneth will work as part of the Feng Wang group and will be mentored by graduate student Ruishi Qi.
Nishanth Chavourkar and mentor Andrea Herman
Biophysics of Gene Regulation
Project Summary: Optical lattice atomic clocks are the most precise timekeeping devices constructed by human-kind, and in some cases they already operate at the "standard quantum limit" for atomic clock performance. Quantum entanglement between the atoms in the clock in the form of "spin-squeezing" provides a way to bypass this limit and achieve even higher performance. One method of generating spin-squeezing is Rydberg dressing, which requires a short wavelength laser to address high energy atomic states. In order to ensure this laser maintains a stable frequency and narrow linewidth, we will reference this laser to an ultra-low expansion (ULE) cavity using a Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) locking technique. We will then characterize the locked laser’s performance in our experimental implementation of Rydberg dressed spin squeezing.
Nishanth will work as part of the Hernan Garcia group and will be mentored by graduate student Andrea Herman.
Abby Schleigh and mentor Noah Sailer
Testing Galaxy Feedback
We believe that star formation in galaxies is shut down by feedback from supermassive black holes, but different models disagree drastically about the size of this effect. Using newly acquired data from galaxy redshift surveys and the radiation from the cosmic microwave background the student will provide new empirical constraints on how gas is redistributed within dark matter halos by the energetic processes occurring as galaxies form and evolve.
Abby will work as part of the Martin White group and will be mentored by graduate student Noah Sailer.
Monica Ubeda Rodriquez De Temlbeque and mentor Xiaosheng Huang
Fast and Robust Strong Lens Modeling for Galaxy Mass Profile Evolution
We have successfully applied a fast Bayesian lens modeling framework our group has developed (GIGA-Lens; https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.07663) to a real lensing system (Cikota, Bertolla, Huang+ 2023; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ace9da/). This is the first time a strong lensing system was modeled with GPUs. In this project, we will turn this modeling framework into a pipeline that can model a large number of systems from our Hubble data and from systems from previous observations over the widest redshift range ever (from z = 0.1 to 1). This will address important questions about how the galaxy mass profile evolves over time.
Monica will work as part of the Saul Perlmutter group and will be mentored by Associate Professor Xiaosheng Huang
2024 Pi2 Summer Scholar Reports
Back to the Pi2 Summer Scholar overview