Physics
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Investigation of Background from the Inter-Spectrometer Penning Trap and Secondary Electron Emission in the KATRIN Experiment
The KATRIN experiment aims to determine the neutrino mass with unprecedented precision by measuring the tritium $\beta$-decay spectrum with a tandem of MAC-E-filter spectrometers. The background rate measured at the ... -
Measuring the Precession Frequency in the E989 Muon g-2 Experiment
The E989 Muon $g-2$ Experiment aims to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, $a_\mu$, to an unprecedented precision of 140 parts per billion (ppb). There currently stands a greater than 3$\sigma$ discrepancy ... -
Getting the most out of nanopores
Over the past three decades, the fields of biophysics and biotechnology have seen an era of unprecedented growth, bolstered by the development of new experimental techniques. Prominent within these techniques are ... -
MuSun: A Precision Measurement of Nuclear Muon Capture in Deuterium with a Cryogenic Time Projection Chamber
The MuSun experiment aims to measure the muon capture rate on deuterium to 1.5\%, allowing for the extraction of a low energy constant required to quantify the axial two body current in the framework of modern effective ... -
Optimization of Muon Injection and Storage in the Fermilab g-2 Experiment: From Simulation to Reality
The anomaly of the muon magnetic dipole moment, $a_\mu \equiv (g_\mu - 2)/2$, is a sensitive probe into the Standard Model~(SM) of particle physics because it can be calculated with high precision and also measured with ... -
Searching for Dark Matter with Boosted Higgs Decays in Proton-Proton Collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector
If Dark Matter particles interact with Standard Model particles, it could be possible to pair produce Dark Matter particles in association with a detectable Standard Model particle at a collider such as the LHC. If this ... -
Neural Mechanisms of Trial and Error Learning: a Study from Bird Song
In this dissertation I examine how variation is generated, shaped and controlled in the brain during trial-and-error learning. The first part of this dissertation concerns the mathematical modeling of networks of neurons ... -
Quantum Dynamics in Rugged Energy Landscapes, and Additional Topics in Disordered Systems
This thesis concerns the interplay of quantum mechanics with strong disorder, and the novel dynamical phases that are unique to disordered quantum systems. The results that we present apply to systems ranging from spin ... -
Axion-like Dark Matter Detection with Mercury-199 Atoms
The objective of this dissertation is to search for axion dark matter through the coupling between the axion field and the electric dipole moment(EDM) of mercury-199 atoms. If the axion is the significant fraction of dark ... -
Interlayer Valley Excitons in Two-Dimensional Semiconductor Heterostructures
The ability to isolate and manipulate two-dimensional crystals into carefully designed van der Waals heterostructures is an emerging technology that offers an unprecedented level of control over the optical and electronic ... -
Investigating and Improving Student Understanding of Superposition in Introductory and Quantum Physics Courses
This dissertation presents results from research and curriculum development related to student understanding of the principle of superposition in introductory optics and upper-division quantum mechanics courses. The focus ... -
Probing valley and magnetic photoexcitations in 2D crystals and their heterostructures
Layered materials are excellent systems for investigating physics in two dimensions. Understanding the optical response of 2D layered materials and their heterostructures at the atomically thin limit is an important aspect ... -
Improving the Accuracy and Application of Nanopore DNA Sequencing
DNA contains the code of life, forming the molecular basis for all of life's diversity. The past several decades have witnessed remarkable progress in our ability to read and understand life's code through DNA sequencing. ... -
Methods for a dedicated breast cancer scanner combining positron emission tomography (PET) and mammography imaging
The PET/X breast imaging system is designed to be a compact positron emission tomography (PET) scanner with a rectangular field of view (FOV) that can be mounted directly over the conventional mammography scanner. This ... -
Finite-beta simulations of HIT-SI and HIT-SI3 using the NIMROD code
The Helicity Injected Torus with Steady Inductive helicity injection (HIT-SI) and HIT-SI3 experiments are a pair of devices that form and sustain spheromak plasmas through the use of Steady Inductive Helicity Injection ... -
From Quantum Gravity to Combinatorial Hives: Addressing Longstanding Puzzles with Novel Approaches
A thesis in two parts, this manuscript concerns the applications of contemporary techniques in optimization, network theory, combinatorial topology, and other branches of discrete mathematics to longstanding problems in ... -
The search for an organizing physical framework for statistics
Theories of statistical analysis remain in conflict and contradiction. But nature reveals an elegant and coherent formulation of statistics in the thermal properties of physical systems. Demanding that a viable statistical ... -
Large Momentum Separation Matter Wave Interferometry
This work establishes a new benchmark for momentum separation in a matter wave interferometer with stable, visible fringes. With a path separation of 112 photon recoil momenta, our signal visibility of 30% and phase stability ... -
Enhancing EoR limits through improved instrumental calibration of the MWA
Epoch of Reionization observations have the potential to be transformative in the field of cosmology, but this is impossible without unprecedented levels of precision in calibration. We enhance EoR upper limits from the ... -
Coupling the Radial Vibrational Modes of Mixed Barium-Ytterbium Chains for Quantum Computing
The advantages of mixed species ion chains may be essential to scaling a quantum computer; however, using them requires a better understanding of mixed species ion trapping and manipulation than we currently posses. In ...
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