Archive for ‘Research’

(Contribution by Brandon Coombes, Junior from Fort Worth, TX.  Brandon is working at Lawerence Livermore National Lab this summer)

Security is tight here and the restrictions on what you can do at the lab are even tighter.  This is what makes the world we live in here at the lab move so slow.  If you need computer access, give it a couple of days.  If you need a part, give it a couple of weeks. Let’s not even get started on the S word.  You can’t put this word in any of your titles because of the legalities it would invoke.  This word (in a whisper) is SAFETY.  Let me tell you, through all the rigorous tests and processes, I can guarantee that our experiment at the lab is being performed safely.

Brandon and Tyler work with Dr. Towell, who forgot his lab coat again!

Our experiment, NIFFTE, has been going pretty well and progressing to the point that we will be sending the prototype Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to Los Alamos.  This also means that there is a lot of work to do with getting our online software to work so that they can take real data when it gets there.  Sarvagya Sharma has been working on getting the reconstruction of data to work correctly while also working on making a test stand for the preamp cards.  Tyler Thornton’s work has been effectively paused until we know what we are going to do with Slow Controls.  Dr. Qu has locked himself in the lab and is beating the Event Builder and Packet Receiver into submission.  Brandon Coombes is working on a way to read out the cathode on the TPC faster, but unfortunately some parts need to be ordered and some things are needing to be fixed (Uh Oh! See 1st Paragraph).  Not to worry, with our bright young minds we will be able accomplish everything this summer!

Outside of the lab, Sarvagya, Tyler, and Brandon are all staying with families from a local church here in Livermore, Tri-Valley Church of Christ.  Free time for Sarvagya consists of riding his bike around trails and getting away from trails that have snakes lurking.  For Tyler, he spends his time buttering up his newly endowed fiance, Holly, and also trying to beat Sarvagya and Brandon in as many variations of basketball as he can.  As for Brandon, he goes home and plays Xbox 360 and continues drawing his graphic novel.  One thing that has kept the mornings busy is World Cup.  Tyler and Brandon come to the lab at 9 am instead of 8 on days the US team plays and they do play well (if the refs do not call ridiculous things).

That is about all we have from the West Coast. California weather beats Texas weather and the trees and hills aren’t bad either.

-Brandon

Last week marked the tenth anniversary of the first recorded collision of the nuclei from two gold atoms by the PHENIX collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory.  This collision (shown below) and the billions of billions that followed, have deepened our understanding of the structure of matter and what holds it together on the smallest size scales and the largest energy scales.  From the beginning, ACU and our Nuclear Physics Research Team have been part of this work.

The first PHENIX event–June 15, 2000!

Event display of the first Au+Au collision recorded by the PHENIX detector.

In an email to the PHENIX collaboration, the spokeswoman, Barbara Jacak said, “Precisely ten years ago, PHENIX recorded our very first collision. It has been quite a journey from that day to now. Our accomplishments include 88 papers published and several more in the refereeing process.  The many thousands of citations garnered by these papers are a testament not only to our productivity, but also to the importance of our data.  In the incredibly successful Run-10, we recorded almost exactly one petabyte of data! Such volumes seemed downright scary a decade ago, and now we have blazed a trail wherein it is simply normal.  Our scientific and technical impact from the first decade is enormous, and I am confident that the impact from the next decade will be as well!”

I joined the PHENIX collaboration in 1999 and have been an active member ever since that time.  During the past ten years 36 ACU students have been involved with this research.  Most of these students and 4 ACU faculty members have contributed sufficiently to be listed as authors on the papers published by PHENIX.  In fact, there has not been a PHENIX publication that does not include a member of our team as an author.

It is worth noting that the students that got experience working on PHENIX have followed very different but also very successful career paths.  While some students have continued in graduate school to pursue a degree in nuclear physics, other students have decided to specialize in other fields of physics.  Other students have gone to graduate school in fields of engineering, math, and computer science.  Some students have gone to medical school or even medical physics.  Of course several students sought employment after graduating from ACU and found great jobs in education and industry.  What all of these students have in common is that while they were helping us learn more about the nature of the world around us, they were also gaining a valuable experience that helped them prepare for their future.

-Dr. Towell

As part of the backlog of posts, see this recent ACU news story about last summer’s crew in Los Alamos.  My favorite section from the story:

That may sound complicated or impossibly complex. But Sarvagya has no problems with it.

“I did the fun stuff,” he said.

The bottom of the article briefly mentions the Hawaii conference, which probably deserves more press time.  Hopefully I can get some of the students to tell you about it soon.  Come to think about it, most of the great trips in my life have been physics conferences (though that my say more about me then the trips themselves).  This year, the fall DNP conference moves from Hawaii to sunny Santa Fe, which probably has a little less marketing potential.  Last time I was in Santa Fe, my wife was hobbling around on a shattered ankle which diminished the experience somewhat.  So I’m looking forward to a less eventful visit this fall.

-Dr. D