A pilot program funded by the DOE Office of Science, Nuclear Physics. This training and research experience has goal to increasing the likelihood that participants will choose to pursue a graduate degree in nuclear physics or another science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) related field.
Selected undergraduate students from Fort Lewis College will put in fifteen hours work during the school year and move to a full-time 40-hour week during the summer and will be compensated for their time. The traineeship would be the equivalent of full-time summer work.
OUR PRIMARY MOTIVATION IS TO TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS
This program focuses on the training and physics field retention of undergraduate indigenous women from Fort Lewis College, a four year degree granting institute.
The training will be performed by high energy nuclear physicists from Los Alamos National laboratory. The research group follows open science practices and does not require special clearances beyond what is standard at LANL.
Quarks and gluons, collectively called partons, are the fundamental constituents of protons, neutrons, the atomic nucleus as well as other hadrons. Gluons carry no mass whereas the quark's mass is much smaller than that of the nucleons. The mass of the nucleons is instead generated by the interaction between quarks and gluons and therefore one can state that the dynamics of gluon fields is responsible for nearly all visible matter in the universe. Without gluons there would be no nucleons, no atomic nuclei and thus no visible world. The interaction between quarks and gluons is governed by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Despite tremendous progress over the past 25 years, our understanding of QCD is still far from complete. Several regimes have been identified in what we call the “QCD landscape”. This landscape is described as a function of two quantities: the fraction x of the nucleon’s momentum carried by the partons under consideration and the energy scale Q2, which characterizes the resolution at which quarks and gluons interactions are probed. In particular, for moderate to large values of Q2 and small values of x, the increasingly high gluon density eventually saturates and nuclear matter is described as a Color Glass Condensate, or CGC whose properties are both universal and not unlike that of an ordinary glass. This project derives from a long term investment that ultimately will quantify the existence of the CGC and characterize its properties.
The project will engage the students on two basic aspects of the physics research just described:
How to simulate the decay kinematics of particles emitted from a collision vertex and traveling close to the z-axis (beam pipe), these kinematics correspond to a low-x regime relevant for saturation physics.
How to detect these particles with an apparatus. LANL has an ongoing R&D to build a scintillator-based tracking detector. The team expects to install a prototype inside the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland/France around 2023 contingent on the Large Hadron Collider schedule post-COVID.
Participants will travel to CERN during the paid portion of the internship. The participants will contribute to the construction, testing or installation of the detector.
An essential part of our research program includes mentoring and outreach. The interns will be expected to talk about their current work in informal settings related to community outreach activities to young women enrolled in high-school during their internship, locally and abroad.
Astrid Morreale. PhD in physics, PI of project (2021-2022), chair-elect of the American Physical Society for our region.
Cesar Da Silva. PhD in physics, HENP Team leader at LANL PI of project (2021-2023).
Krista L. Smith. PhD in physics, postdoctoral scholar Co-PI of the project (2022-2023)
Laurie Williams. PhD in Mechanical Engineering, FLC Chair and Professor of Physics & Engineering.
Julie L. Nelson. Senior undergraduate at FLC. Graduating in 2023
Affiliation to the Cheyenne Sioux River Tribe
Arielle Platero. Bachelors in Engineering. Graduated in December 2021
Affiliation to the Navajo/Dine Nation
Gwendolyn Gjtsosie. Bachelors in Engineering. Graduated in December 2022
Affiliation to the Navajo Nation
Jade Martinez. Sophomore undergraduate in Computer Engineering at FLC. Graduating in May 2025
Affiliation to the Navajo Nation
Victoria Nofchissey. Junior undergraduate in Physics at FLC. Graduating in May 2024
Affiliation to the Navajo Nation
Elaina Saltclah. Junior undergraduate in Physics at FLC. Graduating in May 2024
Affiliation to the Navajo Nation