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TP4
ICECUBE SUMMER RESEARCH EXPERIENCE WITH RESEARCHERS AT RUHR UNIVERSITÄT BOCHUM
International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation to support active participation of US undergraduates in international research projects. Laura Lusardi from New Richmond, WI, and Kelsey Kolell from Fond du Lac, WI, participated in the IRES program through UW–River Falls to work on IceCube research for the summer.
We are both third-year undergraduate students, studying physics at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. This summer, we had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Germany through IRES to work with IceCube researchers. Even though we both ended up attending the same university, we took wildly different paths to get here.
Kelsey:
Going into my junior year of high school, I had every intention of majoring in chemistry once I got to college. This quickly changed after I took a physics class and fell in love with the subject. I had a great teacher who was really enthusiastic about physics and wanted her students to love it as much as she did. I changed direction and started to investigate colleges for studying physics. My high school teacher recommended that I look into where she earned her masters in physics, which is how I ended up studying physics and math at the UW–River Falls.
Laura:
Ever since I was a child, I've had a keen interest in astronomy. My interest piqued as I grew older, and I knew that astrophysics was what I wanted to pursue in college. Aside from UW–River Falls' phenomenal physics program, its involvement with the IceCube project was one of my greatest motivations for attending school there. I had hoped to get involved with the project during the school year, but the process actually began before I even started my first year. It was all thanks to our professor, Dr. Surujhdeo Seunarine. He was on a committee for a scholarship that I was applying for, and during that interview I expressed my interest in astrophysics. It was also during this time that I met Kelsey, who turned out to be one of my colleagues and best friends. Later that winter, when applications were being accepted for the IceCube summer internship, he remembered my interest and advised both of us to submit an application.
Kelsey:
When I came to River Falls, I had neither heard of the IceCube project nor had any knowledge of particle astrophysics. It just so happened that my advisor was Dr. Seunarine. Once he heard that I wanted to go into research, he told me about the project and about the chance to work on it over the summer.
We were unsure whether we would get into the program due to our lack of experience, but we were both extremely surprised to find that we had in fact been accepted! This was the beginning of a spectacular year working with each other and IceCube. During our ten weeks abroad, we worked with two PhD students, Fabian Bos and Sebastian Schöneberg, at the Ruhr Universität Bochum.
Laura:
I worked with Fabian on calibration of the detector using sun and moon shadows. Although IceCube's main goal is to detect high-energy neutrinos, it is important to make sure that we can also use it to see the sun and the moon. IceCube may be a telescope, but it doesn't have a lens through which to look, so we have to utilize a different method to see these celestial bodies. Both the sun and the moon create “shadows” by blocking incoming cosmic rays, which we see as a deficit of these cosmic rays within the detector. This information is then used as a calibration tool as well as to improve the angular resolution of the detector itself.
Over the course of the summer, I worked on improving my programming skills while learning about the different aspects of the project. I focused on two distinct analyses used in calculating cosmic ray deficits. I learned how use the different tools for coding, how to pull and process the IceCube data, and how to write and run the programs that generate the plots. Near the end of the summer, I was able to write my own programs and even improve upon some of the existing ones to generate new plots of the shadows.
Kelsey:
I worked with Sebastian on simulation of atmospheric neutrinos and muons. The goal for Sebastian’s project is to create simulations of the atmospheric neutrino flux at low energies. When cosmic ray particles enter the atmosphere, they interact with other particles creating a shower of secondary particles. With high-energy particles, the shower of secondary particles follows the same path as the primary particle, but for particles at lower energies, the showers branch out, like a cone of secondary particles, which casts a ring on the surface of the Earth. Each of these rings has a different percentage of secondary particles, some of which may hit the detector even if the path from the primary particle would have missed it and vice versa. My job was to figure out how many of the secondary particles would hit the detector at different angles. To do this, I made a lot of triangles and did a lot of trigonometry. Then, I was able to develop a procedure to find how much of the detector was being hit with the secondary particles. This is important, because if we can figure out how to account for the geometry without actually simulating it, we can save a lot of computing processing time.
By the end of the summer, we both made a lot of progress. Not only did we learn a lot about programming and physics, but more importantly we learned about working with graduate students and communicating with others about our work, all the while navigating a foreign country. It has been a truly remarkable summer. We have both learned so much during our time in Germany, met so many wonderful people, and made lots of new friends. This summer has opened our eyes to what it is really like to work in physics. We will both be able to use all the experiences that we gained this summer to help us achieve our dreams of becoming research physicists.
Photo (c) IceCube: Kelsey, Laura, Sebastian, and Fabian at the Ruhr Universität Bochum.
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EP5
DR. AHMED M. HALA
Dr. Ahmed M. Hala is a Research Assistant Professor at the Plasma Physics Group of the Materials Science Research Institute of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology - KACST in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Hala will be a guest of Prof. Dr. Uwe Czarnetzki at the Chair of Plasma and Atomic Physics (Experimental Physics V) from 31.08.-04.09.2015.
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TP4
SIYAO XU
Siyao Xu from Peking University, China, will give a talk on "Damping of MHD turbulence in partially ionized media" on September 2, 2015 as part of the Space and Astrophysics Seminar. The talk has been held NB 7/67 at 10:15 am. Those interested are welcome to attend!
Siyao Xu is a guest at the Institute of Theoretical Physics IV in August and September.
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EP2
ATTA UL HAQ
PhD student Atta Ul Haq from the University of Ulster (UK) is visiting the Chair of Experimental Physics II for two and a half months (14.9.-30.11.). In the framework of his RAPID project "Microplasma-based synthesis of composite semiconducting nanoparticles" he is working together with Master student Philip Lucke.
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TET
ASST. PROF. DR. VASCO GUERRA
Asst. Prof. Dr. Vasco Guerra from IST Lisboa, Portugal, will visit Dr. Efe Kemaneci from TET on September 3rd. His talk about "Kinetic modelling of microwave discharges in O2-containing mixtures" is at 11:00 am (ID 04/413).
Everybody interested is welcome to join!
Abstract: A self-consistent kinetic model is developed in order to study the elementary processes occurring in surfacewave microwave discharges in pure O2 and in the mixtures O2-Ar, O2-N2 and O2-N2-Ar. The theoretical formulation is based on the solution of a system of 0-D rate balance equations for the dominant neutral and charged species, coupled to the homogeneous electron
Boltzmann equation and to the quasi-neutrality condition, allowing the self-consistent determination of the sustaining reduced electric field E/N. The model is used to investigate different phenomena, such as dissociation in O2 discharges, production of O2(a) and UV emitting species, or the formation of NO and O3 molecules. The extension of the model to situations of
small-diameters / low-pressures, where the kinetics is strongly dominated by electron-impact collisions and wall interactions, is briefly discussed.
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TP4
PETER H. YOON
Peter H. Yoon from the University of Maryland - Institute for Physical Science and Technology - USA, has received a "VIP Grant of the Reseach School PLUS". He will spend the next three years at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, from which especially the PhD students will benefit (international enrichment of the "graduate education").
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EP5
MARC VAN DER SCHANS
Marc van der Schans from the Department of Applied Physics, Elementary Processes in Gas discharges (EPG) at the TU Eindhoven (Netherlands) is visiting PhD student Patrick Böhm (Experimental Physics V) during the week of July 27-31, 2015. The goal of the collaboration includes the application of the electric field measurement technique, which will be further developed by Patrick Böhm in the context of his PhD thesis at Ruhr-Universität, to a plasma bullet discharge, which will be further developed and extensively analyzed by Marc van der Schans, also in the context of his PhD thesis. In case of positive results, the results will even lead to the construction of a corresponding setup at the TU Eindhoven, whereby the rarely represented electric field measurement technique, also known as "E-CARS", would find another application site.
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EP5
DR. RALF HEIDEMANN
On Friday, July 17, 2015, at 10:15 a.m., Dr. Ralf Heidemann from Thales Germany will give a talk on "The HEMP Thruster Technology - The next generation ion propulsion engines for satellites and interplanetary missions" in NABF 05/694. Dr. Heidemann comes from the department "Electric Propulsion R&D - Electron Devices" of the Thales Group in Ulm and is guest of Prof. Dr. Uwe Czarnetzki at the Chair of Plasma and Atomic Physics Experimental Physics V).
Interested parties are welcome!
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EP5
DR. QING XIONG
Dr. Qing Xiong, researcher and Assistant Professor from College of Electrical Engineering, Chongqing University, China, gives a talk about "Atmospheric Pressure Micro-plasma Jets and Glow Discharge with Water Electrode". It will be on July 15th, 2015, at 10:15 am at NABF05/694. Anybody interested is welcome to join.
Dr. Qing Xiong will be visiting Prof. Dr. Uwe Czarnetzki at Experimentalphysics V. His research interests mostly focus on advanced spectroscopic diagnostic of cold atmospheric pressure plasmas and plasma interacting with liquids.
Abstract: Non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure micro-plasma jets have recently obtained increasing attention for their unique features such as chamber-less operation and enhanced chemistry without elevated gas temperature. These attractive features make them prospective in several emerging novel applications, such as bio-medicine, material synthesis and surface modification. Characterizations and control of these micro-discharges are important, especially their physics and chemistry, to get insights into mechanisms of plasma treatments. On the other side, plasma interacts with liquid are common in plasma in liquid or in contact with liquid, but interaction processes are very complicated. Until now the fundamentals of interactions between plasma and liquid still remain open with a lot of indistinct issues. Important questions about how the plasma affects the liquid chemistry, and meanwhile how the liquid influences the chemistry of plasma, need to be answered.
These are the main background of my talk, and I will report the characterizations of atmospheric pressure micro-plasma jets, include their physics and chemical features based on plasma diagnostic (OES, LIF, etc). Meanwhile, the presentation will report my recent result of OH radicals production in a glow discharge in contact with water, based on broadband UV absorption spectroscopy measurements. Production mechanism of OH radicals in the discharge above water will be discussed.
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TP4
PROF. DR. YURI LITVINENKO
Prof. Dr. Yuri Litvinenko from the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand will be visiting the Chair of Space and Astrophysics (Theoretical Physics IV) from 01.12.2015 to 26.02.2016. His stay is funded by the Research School PLUS in the program "Visiting Research Professor" (VIP) through an award applied for by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schlickeiser and PD Dr. Horst Fichtner. This support will also be used for further longer visits in the period until November 2017.
Foto: Copyright University of Waikato
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SCHÜLERPRAKTIKANT JAKOB RAFFLER
Within the framework of the Austrian Matura (high school diploma), a pre-scientific paper is required. Jakob Raffler, student at the Bundesrealgymnasium GRG 23 Altererlaa, Vienna also supervised by Renate Stingl writes in his thesis about "Research on pulsed high power plasmas at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum". In order to get first-hand information, he is therefore a guest at the SFB-TR87 for one week (6.7.-10.7.2015) and together with Christian Maszl (Project C3, Institute of Experimental Physics II) is working both experimentally and theoretically on plasmas and their applications. In March 2016, he will hand in his work and give a presentation at his school. We wish him a lot of fun in Bochum and success with his work!