Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

On The Exact Helium Wave Function Expansion, Ii, An Exponential Modulated Form, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

A 1¹S wave function’s expansion for 2 electron atoms and ions is proposed employing an appropriate exponential factor and Fock’s logarithmic terms. The leading coefficient’s are presented.

Modeling Accuracy Matters: Aligning Molecular Dynamics With 2d Nmr Derived Noe Restraints, Milan Patel

Honors Scholar Theses

Among structural biology techniques, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) provides a holistic view of structure that is close to protein structure in situ. Namely, NMR imaging allows for the solution state of the protein to be observed, derived from Nuclear Overhauser Effect restraints (NOEs). NOEs are a distance range in which hydrogen pairs are observed to stay within range of, and therefore experimental data which computational models can be compared against. To that end, we investigated the effects of adding the NOE restraints as distance restraints in Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations on the 24 residue HP24stab derived villin headpiece subdomain to …

Fourier Acceleration In The Linear Sigma Model, Cameron Cianci

Honors Scholar Theses

The linear sigma model is a low energy effective model of Quantum Chromodynamics. This model mimics the breaking of chiral symmetry both spontaneously and explicitly through the quark condensate and pion mass matrix respectively. Fourier acceleration is a method that can be implemented in the Hybrid Monte-Carlo algorithm which decreases autocorrelations due to critical slowing down through tuning the mass parameters in the HMC algorithm. Fourier acceleration is applied to the linear sigma model with a novel mass estimation procedure, by assuming the modes behave approximately like simple harmonic oscillators. The masses are chosen by sampling the expectation values of …

Detecting The Phi Meson With Clas12, Paul Simmerling

Honors Scholar Theses

Analysis and detection of the phi(1020) vector meson from exclusive electroproduction decay into Kaons have been performed. Studying exclusive phi electroproduction is an ideal channel for quantifying the gluonic properties of the nucleon. This detection used the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS12) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) with a 10.6 GeV longitudinally polarized electron beam and an unpolarized hydrogen target. Using the detected final state particles phase space, x_B, Q^2, W, and by developing specialized exclusivity cuts as well as several additional cuts, events containing the production of a phi(1020) meson were able to be extracted. Additionally, a …

Infinite Volume Reconstruction Method Qed Pion Mass Corrections On The Lattice, Michael Riberdy

Honors Scholar Theses

We use the Infinite Volume Reconstruction Method to calculate the charged/neutral pion mass difference. The hadronic tensor is calculated on the lattice using a QCD+QED framework, and the mass shift is calculated with exponentially-suppressed finite volume errors. In this paper we discuss the Feynman diagrams relevant to the pion mass difference and we recapitulate the advantages of the Infinite Volume Reconstruction Method. We then discuss the extrapolation to the continuum limit, and report a charged/neutral pion mass difference of 4.52 MeV, which is within 1.44% of the accepted value.

H-Atom Ladder Operator Revisited, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

An error laden note (Am. J. Phys., 34, 984,(1966)) concerning the ladder operator solution to the hydrogen atom electronic energy levels is corrected.

Automating 35mm Photographic Film Digitization: X-Y Table Capture System Design And Assessment, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

35mm still image formats are some of the most abundant photographic film types in cultural heritage collections. However, their special handling needs coupled with high resolution digital capture requirements have traditionally posed logistical constraints with regard to the formats’ digitization at scale. Through the use of a programmable X-Y table camera capture system, both slide and strip 35mm photographic film can be digitized in an automated fashion following Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines (FADGI).

Computational Analysis Of A New Planar Mixing Layer Flame Configuration To Study Soot Inception, Carmen Ciardiello

Honors Scholar Theses

The production of soot is omnipresent in society today. Soot is the product of many of the combustion processes that provide the bulk of the usable energy throughout the world. Furthermore, soot particulate poses a great danger to both the environment and all forms of life on Earth. It has proven to pollute ecosystems, foster health problems for human beings, and degrade air quality [1].

These dangers make studying and understanding soot particulate paramount for improving the quality of life. Thus, this study introduces a new flame configuration for studying soot inception. Presently, various common flame configurations have been found …

Changes In The Scattering Phase Shifts For Partial Waves Of Ultracold Particles At Different Energies, Kaaviyan Faezi

Honors Scholar Theses

At low energies, scattering phase shifts, the difference in phases between the incoming and outgoing spherical waves in scattering, for different partial waves follow a similar pattern. The phase shift curves, which are a function of the angular momentum quantum number for different scattering energy, obtain resonances after reaching their maxima, and as energy is increased, these resonances become smaller and eventually disappear. Using numerical methods involving the use of Chebyshev polynomials, we solve the wave equation for a scattering potential to obtain the radial equation. From the radial equation we then find the scattering phase shift for a particular …

A Consistent Classical Relativistic Model Of A Finite Size Particle, Mira Varma

Honors Scholar Theses

An exactly solvable classical field theoretical model of a stable particle of finite size is studied. The model consists of a "swarm" of matter particles bound by an interplay of three static fields: one electromagnetic field, a massive scalar field, and a massive vector field. The internal forces due to the three fields balance each other to form a stable particle. The model parameters can be chosen such that the described particle has the mass and radius of a proton. The model qualitatively reproduces the pressure distribution inside a proton in agreement with recent experimental findings.

Analyzing The Mindsets And Behaviors Of Introductory Physics Students Through The Lens Of Intellectual Humility, Meagan Sundstrom

University Scholar Projects

Students often enter the physics classroom with intuitive conceptions drawn from real life experiences or former coursework, and may be hesitant or reluctant to re-evaluate these mindsets in favor of formally instructed knowledge. The goal of introductory physics courses is not only to teach and expose students to new content, but also to cultivate students’ ability to reason through and derive content knowledge through personal inquiry. This scientific process necessitates one’s abilities to be open-minded in terms of hearing evidence that contradicts his or her personal opinion, to be willing to discard any original misconceptions in the face of such …

Seeing Eye To Eye: A Machine Learning Approach To Automated Saccade Analysis, Maigh Attre

Honors Scholar Theses

Abnormal ocular motility is a common manifestation of many underlying pathologies particularly those that are neurological. Dynamics of saccades, when the eye rapidly changes its point of fixation, have been characterized for many neurological disorders including concussions, traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and Parkinson’s disease. However, widespread saccade analysis for diagnostic and research purposes requires the recognition of certain eye movement parameters. Key information such as velocity and duration must be determined from data based on a wide set of patients’ characteristics that may range in eye shapes and iris, hair and skin pigmentation [36]. Previous work on saccade analysis has …

Analyzing The Mindsets And Behaviors Of Introductory Physics Students Through The Lens Of Intellectual Humility, Meagan Sundstrom

Honors Scholar Theses

Students often enter the physics classroom with intuitive conceptions drawn from real life experiences or former coursework, and may be hesitant or reluctant to re-evaluate these mindsets in favor of formally instructed knowledge. The goal of introductory physics courses is not only to teach and expose students to new content, but also to cultivate students’ ability to reason through and derive content knowledge through personal inquiry. This scientific process necessitates one’s abilities to be open-minded in terms of hearing evidence that contradicts his or her personal opinion, to be willing to discard any original misconceptions in the face of such …

Infra-Red Microwave Spectra, Overtones, Degeneracy And Thermal Populations All In One Diagram, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

An old drawing, which had an error in it, is re-presented (corrected) for understanding the relationships in diatomic vibrational-rotational interactions at the introductory level.

Lattice Dynamical Origins Of Structural Negative Thermal Expansion, Connor A. Occhialini

Honors Scholar Theses

Most materials, upon heating, expand into a larger volume through an effect known as thermal expansion. However, some materials do not obey this intuitive phenomenon and instead exhibit negative thermal expansion (NTE), which describes the anomalous propensity of these materials to shrink when warmed. Since its discovery, NTE has been found in a wide variety of materials with an array of magnetic, electronic and structural properties. In some cases, the NTE originates from the electronic degrees of freedom in the system or through magnetic phase competition, but we here focus on a particular class of NTE which originates solely from …

Computational Analysis Of Poliovirus Structural Dynamics Using A Coarse-Grained Model, Maneesh Koneru

University Scholar Projects

Though eradicated in most of the world, poliovirus remains a common model virus for a family of mammalian viruses known as Picornaviruses. Despite the development of a vaccination, little is understood about the infection process, particularly the mechanism of cell entry. Experimental studies have attempted to elucidate the dynamics of this process and have proposed pathways focused on VP4, the smallest of the four peptides which makes up the viral capsid, and its interaction with the pentameric interfaces of the five fold axes. This study utilizes coarse-grained molecular dynamics to supplement these proposed mechanisms with simplified simulations which reduce the …

Ultracold Trimer Ion Formation Of Rb And K, Michael Cantara

University Scholar Projects

The cooling of molecules into the ultracold regime allows for high resolution laser spectroscopy that reveals their complex rotational and vibrational structure. As the temperature is lowered towards absolute zero, the kinetic energy of the particles approaches zero, and therefore the Doppler shift approaches zero. With the Doppler shift negligibly small, spectral resolution is now primarily limited by the natural linewidth of the molecular peaks. Further, ultracold temperatures make possible the production of atoms or molecules that will reside in the lowest few states of the system. The high population in a few select states provides stronger and less congested …

Plotting The Van Der Waals Fluid In Pseudo-3d And The Maxwell Construction, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

The van der Waals (from his thesis of 1873) equation is a cubic in the molar volume. Plotting the equation in pseudo 3 dimensions is quite simple to do, but including tie lines is quite difficult. Employing the solutions to the cubic van der Waals equation, the tie lines are readily available and can be easily incorporated into the aforementioned 3D plots.

Monte Carlo Simulations Of Atmospheric Loss By Stellar Winds From Exoplanets, Daniel P. Violette

University Scholar Projects

Hot Jupiters are a class of extra-solar planets. Massive gas giants on the same size scale as Jupiter, they orbit their host stars closely. This proximity results in large stellar winds capable of stripping away a planet’s atmosphere. Developing a more complete understanding of atmospheric mass loss and evolution in planetary bodies is critical, and Hot Jupiter systems are accessible analogues.

This project will seek to create a computational model capable of estimating mass loss rates due to stellar winds. A Monte Carlo method is utilized to take an ensemble of single, high-energy energetic neutral particles, produced by kilo-electronvolt stellar …

Monte Carlo Simulations Of Atmospheric Loss By Stellar Winds From Exoplanets, Daniel Violette

Honors Scholar Theses

Hot Jupiters are a class of extra-solar planets. Massive gas giants on the same size scale as Jupiter, they orbit their host stars closely. This proximity results in large stellar winds capable of stripping away a planet’s atmosphere. Developing a more complete understanding of atmospheric mass loss and evolution in planetary bodies is critical, and Hot Jupiter systems are accessible analogues.

This project will seek to create a computational model capable of estimating mass loss rates due to stellar winds. A Monte Carlo method is utilized to take an ensemble of single, high-energy energetic neutral particles, produced by kilo-electronvolt stellar …

Biophysical Characterization Of Optimized Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticles As A Malaria Vaccine, Sophia Walker

Honors Scholar Theses

Malaria is an infectious disease that affects several million individuals worldwide and is a significant international public health issue. While there is currently a malaria vaccine in phase III clinical trials, recent results demonstrate that it is only about 35% effective in reducing the incidence of the disease. The use of self-assembling protein nanoparticles (SAPNs) that display epitopes of the repeat sequence of the circumsporozoite protein of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria, has been shown to elicit a strong immune response. This prototype has potential for further improvement by altering the epitope regions of the nanoparticles to …

Agent-Based Modeling Of Emergency Building Evacuation, Vi Q. Ha

Master's Theses

Panic during emergency building evacuation can cause crowd stampede, resulting in serious injuries and casualties. Agent-based methods have been successfully employed to investigate the collective human behavior during emergency evacuation in cases where the configurational space is extremely simple - usually one rectangular room - but not in evacuations of multi-room or multi-floor buildings. This implies that the effect of the complexity of building architecture on the collective behavior of the agents during evacuation has not been fully investigated. Here, we employ a system of self-moving particles whose motion is governed by the social-force model to investigate the effect of …

Use Of Second Harmonic Generation (Shg) Imaging For 3-Dimensional Ultrastructural Visualization Of Muscle Repair Mechanisms, Matthew Dufner

Honors Scholar Theses

In this study, we have combined SHG imaging with various fluorescent dyes which are designed to stain nuclei and used a skeletal muscle injury and regeneration model to establish the ability of this approach to reliably and reproducibly evaluate the above nuclear parameters. By using the cobra cardiotoxin (CTX-1), which creates acute well defined injuries within the muscle, on the tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius hind limb muscles of mice, predictable and reproducible regenerative patterns (in response to acute injury) can be observed by harvesting muscle samples at specific time points during recovery. Through SHG imaging, we endeavor to document …

Numerical Simulations Of Chirped Excitation, Benjamin Iannitelli

Honors Scholar Theses

In this project I developed a general method of finding the optimal laser excitation for an ensemble of two-level atoms with the primary goal of exciting as many atoms as possible, as quickly as possible, for as long as possible, in order of decreasing priority. Specifically, I simulated the laser excitation of a collection of Rubidium-87 atoms from (n=5, L=0, S=1/2, J=1/2) to (n=5, L=1, S=1/2, J=3/2), by finding numerical solutions to the optical Bloch equations. I optimized the parameters of a linear chirp paired with a Gaussian intensity pulse first neglecting and then including spontaneous emission, and then for …

Characterization Of A Thermal Reservoir For Consistent And Accurate Annealing Of High Sensitivity Thermoluminescence Dosimeters In Brachytherapy Dosimetry, William Patrick Donahue

Honors Scholar Theses

Unlike regular TLD, an accurate and consistent annealing of the high-sensitivity TLD at 240 ˚C for 15 minutes is challenging using conventional annealing ovens because the temperature in the oven chamber varies drastically over the 15-minute period after the opening (to put the TLD tray in) and closing of oven door. The temperature in the oven drops dramatically after the door is opened and ramps up gradually after the door is closed, often accompanied with significant temperature overshoot. Because an overshoot by more than 5 ˚C can significantly reduce the sensitivity of the TLD and the ramp-up profile varies with …

Synthesis, Field Emission And Associated Degradation Mechanisms Of Tapered Zno Nanorods, Gregory M. Wrobel Mr.

Master's Theses

Equation 1..... 4

Equation 2..... 4

Equation 3..... 6

Equation 4..... 7

Equation 5..... 9

Equation 6..... 10

Equation 7..... 11

Equation 8..... 12

Equation 9..... 14

Equation 10..... 40

Equation 11..... 51

Synthesis, Field Emission and Associated Degradation Mechanisms of Tapered ZnO Nanorods

Gregory Michael Wrobel, M.S.

University of Connecticut, 2011

Modern development of field emitter arrays (FEA) has been made possible, partly thanks to the synthesis and development of one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures. High aspect ratio 1D nanostructures effectively amplify the electric field at the emitter tips, allowing electrons to be extracted at relatively low electric field. An inexpensive …

Implementation Of The Clas12 Htcc Into Gemc, Nathan A. Harrison

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Design Of Electronics For A High-Energy Photon Tagger For The Gluex Experiment, Mitchell "Woody" Underwood

Honors Scholar Theses

In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), quarks and antiquarks are held together inside hadrons by the nuclear strong force, which is mediated by exchange particles known as gluons. The simplest type of hadron, the meson, consists of a single quark and a single antiquark bound by a gluonic field. The flux-tube model of QCD says that this gluonic field forms a tube of color-electric field lines between the quark and the antiquark which can under the right conditions be made to vibrate. Such mesons with excited glue are called hybrid mesons.

GlueX is a high-energy nuclear physics experiment which will study hybrid …

A Review Of Helium Hamiltonians, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

Helium Hamiltonian transformations are discussed in extreme detail.

Analysis Of Synthetic Diamond Wafer Interferograms Using A Parallelized Simulated Annealing Algorithm, Matthew Demas

Honors Scholar Theses

Diamonds are known for both their beauty and their durability. Jefferson National Lab in Newport News, VA has found a way to utilize the diamond's strength to view the beauty of the inside of the atomic nucleus with the hopes of finding exotic forms of matter. By firing very fast electrons at a diamond sheet no thicker than a human hair, high energy particles of light known as photons are produced with a high degree of polarization that can illuminate the constituents of the nucleus known as quarks. The University of Connecticut Nuclear Physics group has responsibility for crafting these …