Recent attempts at unifying the descriptions of gravity and quantum mechanics predict that Newton's Gravitational Inverse-Square Law will fail below some distance scale, possibly as large as 1 mm. Recent measurements of the Dark Energy content of the universe could also imply short-range modifications to gravity.Our previous ...

I present an initial investigation into a new planet detection technique that uses the transit timing of a known, transiting planet. The transits of a solitary planet orbiting a star occur at equally spaced intervals in time. If a second planet is present; dynamical interactions within the system will cause the time interval ...

Chiral perturbation theory (chiPT), the low-energy effective theory of QCD, can be used to describe QCD observables in the low-energy region in a model-independent way. At any given order in the chiral expansion, chiPT introduces a finite number of parameters that encode the short-distance physics and that must be determined ...

This thesis describes the development and implementation of a new scheme for observing RF transitions between spin states in a single, trapped Ba + ion. We use optical pumping to place the ion in a selected magnetic sublevel of either the 6S1/2 ground state or the 5D3/2 metastable state. The ion is exposed to an RF field, and ...

The measurement of a nonzero permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) on an atom or particle would reveal a new source of CP violation beyond the Standard Model. The first measurement of the 199Hg EDM using a UV laser to optically pump and probe a stack of two 199 Hg vapor cells has been completed yielding the result, d( 199Hg) ...

Adsorption of Helium and Hydrogen on bundles of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNs) has been studied via heat capacity and volumetric isotherm measurements. These measurements allow conclusions regarding the growth of the films, the dimensionality as a function of density, and the structure of the films. Comparisons can ...

The indium ion is among the candidates for optical frequency references because of the comparative simplicity of its laser cooling and trapping, the high quality factor (Q =1.5 x 1015) of its clock transition, and the insensitivity of its clock transition to shifts. The indium ion has an alkaline-earth-like spectrum with a ...

Nanopore analysis of nucleic acids is a novel technique to study the physical properties of nucleic acids at the single-molecule level. It also has the potential to be a central component of a fundamentally new DNA sequencing methodology. In this technique, individual single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules are detected and ...

The GLAST mission (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) will yield a great amount of photon data in the region from 30 MeV to 300 GeV. However, the sparsity of incoming photon events and strong dependence of instrument response on photon energy necessitate data analysis techniques different from those used in similar areas ...

This dissertation reports efforts to develop instructional materials on linear momentum, angular momentum, and forces on rigid bodies in standard introductory physics course. Many common errors in understanding of physics concepts are described. Some of these have been previously reported. Other cases represent new instances ...