| Faculty | Short description of project(s) |
| Jeff Young |
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| Jess Brewer | If a student can propose a project at the TRIUMF muSR Facility (a) that clearly needs doing and (b) for which [s]he is both keen and qualified, I will be glad to help make it happen. A good first impression of what we do can be gained from our Web site at http://musr.org where both our strengths and our weaknesses should be evident to a critical and perceptive observer. (The idea is to identify some weakness that can be corrected in a summer's worth of effort!) I will of course be only too glad to supplement the Web site with discussion and elaboration, either by Email, by telephone or on paper, as needed. But have a look there first. (Hint: most of the projects I have going involve the Web site in some way! See for example the "RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS" link or the "HOW TO ?" column. What needs doing? You tell me! |
| Scott Oser | The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a world-class detector for solar neutrinos located in Sudbury, Ontario. We have opportunities for a student to work for a 4 or 8 month period with detector operations, maintenance, and data analysis. The student will take an active role in operating the SNO experiment. At least a portion of the work will be done at the SNO site in Sudbury. |
| Andre Marziali |
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| Carl Michal | NMR microcoils for two-photon excitation and single fibre silk studies |
| Ingrid Stairs |
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| Kirk W. Madison |
In the UBC Quantum Degenerate
Gases laboratory,
we are building a laser-cooling apparatus to generate ultra-cold samples
of Rubidium and Lithium gases.
These samples will be loaded into an optical crystal to realize a
quantum simulator, a
special purpose analog quantum computer. Possible topics for a 4
to 8 month project include but are not
limited to the design, development and fabrication of:
|
| Doug Bonn | We plan to use a focussed ion beam to thin crystals of high temperature superconductors and then write patterns into the crystal in order to manipulate vortices. There are several inter-related projects that need a student to tackle how to do this ion-milling of the samples. Two examples are studies of magnetic vortices tethered to deliberate defects milled into samples. Another is to generate a narrow superconducting "wire" that can only accomodate a 1-dimensional string of vortices. The project would be a mix of learning how to use this state-of-the-art equipment, and then helping with the experiments on the samples. |
| Douglas Scott | Cosmology using Archival Studies of Sub-millimetre Data: The SCUBA instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is currently the world's best sub-mm camera for studying dust emission from distant galaxies. A great deal of data has been collected since SCUBA started in 1997. Essentially all of these data are freely available, but very little has been done in the way of archival studies. This project will involve working with other members of the UBC sub-mm cosmology group to develop methods and write code to perform studies on parts of the SCUBA archive which contain "blank sky". One approach could be to produce an automated method for finding serendipitous bright sources when the telescope was targetting nearby objects. Another approach might be to statistically study the distribution of fluxes in blank sky measurements to uncover the properties of the faint underlying sources which cannot be individually detected. The project requires some background and a lot of interest in astrophysics, as well as some expertise in computing and numerical methods. |
| Tom Tiedje | Epitaxial Growth Modeling:
Epitaxial crystal growth is a self-assembly process, widely used in
industry, in which individual atoms spontaneously assemble into a single
crystal lattice at a surface. The shape of the surface during and after
growth provides information about the atomic-scale phenomena which take
place during growth. Numerical simulations of the growth using kinetic
Monte Carlo and continuum equations driven with noise are complementary
ways of describing the growth process. The goal of this project will be
to use numerical simulations of crystal growth to model the random surface
topography observed experimentally that is caused by spontaneous
fluctuations associated with the random arrival and attachment of adatoms.
In addition the chaotic behaviour frequently associated with the solutions
of non-linear differential equations is an additional source of random
topography.
Epitaxial Oxide Semiconductors: This project will focus on one or more aspects of the growth and physical properties of ZnO, a new epitaxial oxide semiconductor which can be optically and electrically active. This material will be grown on single crystal substrates in ultrahigh vacuum in the presence of an alkali metal surfactant and reactive oxygen created by a low pressure plasma discharge. |
| Harvey Richer | Reduction of Hubble Space Telescope data |
| Jaymie Matthews | Processing and analysing data from the MOST space satellite:
The MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) mission, launched
in June 2003, is Canada's first all-Canadian scientific satellite in
over 30 years. The instrument, designed and built largely in the UBC
Department of Physics & Astronomy, has the unique capability to measure
changes in stellar brightness down to levels near 1 part per million,
and to monitor stellar variability continuously for up to two months
from orbit.
Each MOST data set consists of series of subrasters of CCD (Charge Coupled Device) images of a Primary Science Target and several Secondary Science Targets, along with detailed satellite telemetry and instrument parameters. With sampling rates of several times per minute and continuous monitoring for weeks, a single data set can consist of up to a quarter of a million individual files. The raw data are downloaded to a network of ground stations at UBC, U of Toronto and U. of Vienna, and the scientific data are gathered here at UBC for processing and various levels of analysis. The ultrahigh precision of the measurements and the long time coverage means that new data processing techniques and software have been developed, and are still being refined. A prospective USRA student could be involved in one or more of a wide range of MOST activities, which include: |
| David Jones | -building a mode-locked fiber laser -constructing electronic control loops to stablize mode-locked fiber laser and Ti:Sapphire lasers. |
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