Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Developing Process Variables Necessary To Operate Simulacrum: The Lcls Accelerator Simulator, Mirian G. Juan Estrella

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser that is located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It fires 120 pulses per second, creating x-ray snapshots of materials at the atomic and molecular level as it undergoes any changes or processes. This resulted in many scientific discoveries in chemistry, biology, energy science, and technology. Now, there is a new vision at SLAC regarding LCLS: to develop Simulacrum. Simulacrum is a system that simulates LCLS and its control system. Within Simulacrum there exits services that contain process variables that measure specific parts of a device on LCLS, which communicate …

Understanding The Behavior Of Sulfidic Colloids In The Presence Of Metals, Daniel Zamudio, Alex Quyenvo, Vincent Noël, John Bargar

STAR Program Research Presentations

Riverton, Wyoming was host to a former uranium and vanadium ore processing plant, which operated from 1958 to 1963. The milling operations at the site contaminated the surface and shallow groundwater. The area became a Department of Energy (DOE) legacy site, where the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the DOE’s natural flushing compliance strategy. Up until the flooding in 2010, the natural flushing compliance strategy was going underway as expected. Sampling after the flood revealed a significant increase in contaminant concentration.

New updated models need to be developed to help understand the situation at Riverton, for which this laboratory experiment …

Beam Loss Analysis Through Particle Tracking Simulation, Marvin Valverde

STAR Program Research Presentations

Water soluble-polymers are commonly used to build detergents or other types of surfactants. These polymers are important because water soluble-polymers used in the development of surfactants have become an essential new factor in the cleaning of oil. However, the development of these surfactants has been constrained by the difficulty of producing them. For this synthesis, phenolic maleimide was used as starting material for a water-soluble polymer. This polymer will be able to break apart at set temperatures and self-assemble into a surfactant.

A Collection Of On-Ice Arctic Measurements 1879-2013, Ryan Avila

STAR Program Research Presentations

Ice thickness measurements have been taken in the arctic through a variety of means for a long time in order to better understand the long-term changes to sea ice. This project is focused on measurements made directly on the ice by using an auger or electromagnetic sounding which have both been shown to be highly accurate compared to other observational methods. Our first goal is to create and update an archive of sea ice data that collects smaller separated data sets in one easy to access location for other researchers to use. Our second goal is to use this data …

Rplidar A2 Accuracy, Ramiro O. Garcia

STAR Program Research Presentations

Traffic is not only a source of frustration but also a leading cause of death for people under 35 years of age. Recent research has focused on how driver assistance technology can be used to mitigate traffic fatalities and create more enjoyable commutes. In addition, self-driving vehicles can reduce fuel consumption the amount by 5% and increases the number of cars on the highway. To achieve this we need to research reliable sensors. This summer I research Rplidar A2 sensor which hopefully will be responsible for recording distance to the preceding car and helping prevent Insider Attacks or Misbehaviors of …

Measuring Length Of Electron Bunches With Optics In Lcls-Ii, Nathan Ahn, Alan Fisher

STAR Program Research Presentations

Since the launch of the LINAC Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in 2009, there have been over 1,000 publications enabling pioneering research across multiple fields. Advances include: harnessing the sun’s light, revealing life’s secrets and aiding drug development, developing future electronics, designing new materials and exploring fusion, customizing chemical reactions, and many more. These discoveries gathered worldwide attention, and now work has begun on a new revolutionary tool, LCLS-II. The LCLS-II will pulse at a million times a second, compared to the 120 pulses from the LCLS. Within the LCLS-II, there are two chicanes, serpentine curves. As the electron beam passes …

Exploring Delay Dispersal In Us Airport Network, Brandon Sripimonwan, Arun Sathanur

STAR Program Research Presentations

The modeling of delay diffusion in airport networks can potentially help develop strategies to prevent the spread of such delays and disruptions. With this goal, we used the publicly-available historical United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flight data to model the spread of delays in the US airport network. For the major (ASPM-77) airports for January 2017, using a threshold on the volume of flights, we sparsify the network in order to better recognize patterns and cluster structure of the network. We developed a diffusion simulator and greedy optimizer to find the top influential airport nodes that propagate the most …

Pnnl Dark Matter Bubble Chamber Simulation, Carl M. Krutz

STAR Program Research Presentations

Based on observations of interactions between objects on a cosmic scale, scientists have determined that a large percentage (85%) of the universe’s mass is not visible. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the primary candidates for this dark matter. Many current projects seek to find WIMPs through various search methods. The PICO dark matter experiment involves observing an underground chamber at SNOLAB for bubbles created when energy in the form of radiation is deposited in a superheated liquid. The group at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) working on the PICO project seeks to develop improvements to the project’s …

A First Look At Sublimation Rates In Toss Island Region, Antarctica, Rebecca Baiman, Scott Landolt

STAR Program Research Presentations

70% of Earth’s fresh water is held in Antarctica ice sheet. If the sheet melts, it has the potential to raise global sea levels by 190 feet (Klekociuk and Wiennecke, 2016). As the climate changes, it is imperative that to understand precipitation systems of Antarctica in order to measure and predict weather around the world. One aspect of precipitation events that we do not understand fully in Antarctica is sublimation. Data was collected from four Ott Pluvio Precipitation Gauges with Belfort Double Alter Shields placed in and around the Ross Ice Shelf from November of 2017 to present. An R …

Low Cost Timing System For High Precision Particle Detection, Eric Madrigal, Sasha Dolgashev, Vi Tran

STAR Program Research Presentations

The project goal was to find a way to make a low-cost high precision timing system. High precision timing systems are already on the market, however, at a high cost. Various particle research projects need a large number of timers, so a substantial budget is required. In order to bypass the need for a large enough budget, commercially available parts were used and tested. The timing system consisted of multiple parts with different low-cost microchips and counters. In order for the project to meet its goal, the timers need to work under 50 picoseconds. Although some tests showed the timers …

Ultra-Fast X-Ray Diffraction Of Metastable Structures During Hydrogen Crystallization, Andrew Pham

STAR Program Research Presentations

Big discoveries can come from small element, and hydrogen is the simplest element in the universe, but its property has been intensely studied in recent years. Hydrogen has a notably complex phase diagram, and its application is important to many scientific fields, such as fundamental physics, inertial confinement fusion, planetary sciences, etc. While sophisticated static observations have probed its structure at extremely high pressures, the higher-temperature studies applying dynamic compression is confined to optical measurement methods. In this project over the summer, I will present spectrally resolved x-ray scattering assessment from plasmons in dynamic compressed deuterium. Collaborating Compton scattering and …

Computing Homology Of Hypergraphs, Jackson Earl

STAR Program Research Presentations

In the modern age of data science, the necessity for efficient and insightful analytical tools that enable us to interpret large data structures inherently presents itself. With the increasing utility of metrics offered by the mathematics of hypergraph theory and algebraic topology, we are able to explore multi-way relational datasets and actively develop such tools. Throughout this research endeavor, one of the primary goals has been to contribute to the development of computational algorithms pertaining to the homology of hypergraphs. More specifically, coding in python to compute the homology groups of a given hypergraph, as well as their Betti numbers …

Memory In A Contact Line, Charity Lizardo, Esmeralda Orozco, Audrey Profeta, Nathan C. Keim

STAR Program Research Presentations

We study the behavior of the liquid-solid-vapor contact line of water held in a narrow gap between two plates. A syringe pump injects and withdraws a constant, small volume of the water, driving the contact line back and forth repeatedly and changing its shape. We take photos of the contact line after each cycle. Comparing subsequent images to each other, we find that after several cycles the contact line reaches one of two steady states: a reversible steady state, where the shape is not changing, or a fluctuating steady state, where the shape continues to change slightly. Experiments on acrylic …