Tag: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

The SETI Scouts Project: Developing Scientifically Literate Young Women through an Astronomy Destination Camp at Pine Mountain Observatory

Presenter(s): Maggie Thompson—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): Scott Fisher

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

Pine Mountain Observatory (PMO) and the University of Oregon are partnered with the SETI Institute and the Girl Scouts to provide a week-long summer destination camp where 10 Girl Scouts from around the US come together to engage in cohort building, outdoor adventuring, and an immersion in STEM programming related to astronomy . This program combines several of the main goals of PMO: undergraduate astronomical research, scientific outreach to public and educational partners, and the development of science literacy in STEM interested groups . The Destination Camp welcomes high-school age Girl Scouts from across the United States to the Observatory, where they learn about astronomy and astronomical research through interactive lessons and close peer mentoring from University of Oregon students . This program has not only educated and inspires the Girl Scouts to continue their interest in STEM careers, but it also provides an opportunity for undergraduate physics students to develop science communication skills through mentoring . Over the two years of the program, PMO has proven to be a great resource for astronomy outreach and research with many of the smaller projects introduced during the camp being replicated by the scout alumni of the program back with their home troops . Additionally, many of these programs can be adapted to other observatories to instill a greater passion for science in the general public .

Equilibrium Solutions for 2-Dimensional Nonaxisymmetric Disks

Presenter(s): Daniel Sellers—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): James Imamura

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

In this study we seek equilibrium solutions for compressible, self-gravitating, 2-dimensional nonaxisymmetric disks . Such structures arise in binary star systems and other systems where tidal forces arise such as in the Earth-moon system . These disks are governed by a Scalar Momentum Equation (SME) and a partial differential equation describing hydrodynamic flow within the disk (Stream Function Equation) . We solve these equations using a self-consistent field approach . At each iterative step, the Stream Function and gravitational potential are approximated at all grid points using Guass-Seidel iteration . These quantities, taken with the SME and appropriate boundary conditions are used to find an updated guess for the density distribution .

Guass-Seidel algorithms are applied to the relevant partial differential equations which have been discretized using a finite central-differencing technique . These solvers are implemented in python and verified using analytical solutions for simple cases, such as axisymmetric disks with uniform density . We find that our solvers converge to the analytical solutions over many iterations .

Parameters for the overall equilibrium solutions are taken from Andalib’s 1998 Dissertation focused on 2-D self-gravitating systems . Present work is focused on reproducing some of the presented solutions as both a check on our equilibrium solutions and as a starting point for further research .

Characterizing the relationship between bacterial motility and range expansion

Presenter(s): Noah Pettinari—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): Raghuveer Parthasarathy

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

Self-propelled organisms were first observed under the microscope over 300 years ago . Since then, great strides have been made in characterizing the mechanisms behind motile behavior in bacteria, but current models relating cellular motility to bulk range expansion have not been rigorously tested . To better characterize the relationship between these micro- and macroscale patterns, our research is focused on the analysis of images collected via light sheet fluorescence microscopy of bacterial cells and macroscopic imaging of range expansion . Preliminary results have suggested disagreements between predicted rates of range expansion and cellular motility . Further data and analysis is needed to confirm these results . These findings may highlight the need for the consideration of spatial structure or the possibility of unknown mechanisms in current models .

Supersymmetric Long Lived Particle Search Using Proton-Proton Collision Data and Simulations from the ATLAS Experiment

Presenter(s): Laura Nosler—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): Laura Jeanty

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

Despite the wealth of information gained by high energy physics over the past few decades, there are still several fundamental gaps in our understanding of the universe . One theory that may provide answers to some of these questions is supersymmetry, which predicts the existence of new particles . In many variations of supersymmetry, some of these particles are expected to have comparatively longer lifetimes . Our research attempts to optimize searches for long lived particles by studying the properties of their signatures and comparing two different methods of reconstructing the energy missing after a collision, with the goal of understanding how the reconstruction algorithms behave for these new particles . To do this, we compare simulated data from proton-proton collisions detected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN reconstructed with these two different algorithms and perform analyses that reveal their differences . The results we have found so far have displayed the differences in the efficiencies of these reconstruction methods in our search, revealing the impact these algorithms will have on our final results and allowing us to improve our sensitivity by tuning our selection routines . The final goal of our experiment is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how to accurately identify these particles in real data, at which point we will extend our experiment to include non-simulated collision data from the ATLAS experiment .

Visualizing Topocluster Algorithms for the Global Trigger

Presenter(s): Sylvia Mason—Physics

Faculty Mentor(s): Stephanie Majewski

Session 5: To the Moon and Back—Relativity Matters

There is a Standard Model of particles and forces that explain the fundamental components of matter . However, this model is incomplete, seeing as we currently understand only about 5% of our universe . The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator that collides protons in the hopes of discovering new particles or forces, so that we can learn more about the other 95% of the universe . The LHC will undergo an upgrade in 2026 that will increase its luminosity, meaning there will be an increased number of collisions per second (up to 200 collisions every 25 nanoseconds) . After this upgrade, the ATLAS trigger system will need to reduce the data by a factor of 40 within 10 microseconds, so we will need to sort out the interesting events very fast . Our group is designing an algorithm for implementation in firmware in the “Global Trigger” system for ATLAS to help select these interesting events . My research focuses on creating accurate 3-D visualizations of potential algorithms that cluster energies from particle showers in the ATLAS Calorimeters, and investigation splitting criteria for these clusters . These visualizations will help us understand the details of the performance of these algorithms, which can significantly help us reject background .