My research interest broadly is laser plasma dynamics and accelerator physics. The intersection of these interests is in plasma acceleration schemes. Lasers in plasmas can be used to make very strong electric and magnetic fields over short distances. These fields can push charged particles to very high energies, ie. accelerators.
.000000000000000001 (1E-18) seconds is an attosecond. Electrons move in materials over 10s to 100s of attoseconds. If we want to track electron movement in materials, which is relevant to drug discovery, biological systems, and quantum communication, then we must be able to create a measurement device that is at least as fast as the electron motion. This is the motivaiton for creating attosecond pulses of light!!! There is currently no easy way to create and control such a breif duration light pulse, however much progress has been made in the last 40 years. The way people go about creating attosecond pulses is through a process within laser plasma interaction, called high harmonic generation. This is where an intense laser interacts with a plasma under very particular conditions (high sensitivity to preplasma scale length, laser intensity contrast, and target material), and the transmitted laser light is distorted (nonlinear processes causing construcitve interference) such that the outgoing pulse of light is extremely breif.
My primary project I am working on is exploring via numerical modelling, and in lab experimentation ways to create these attosecond light pulses more efficiently, and more precisely using solid targets (flat smooth pieces of glass or copper) . This is in order to eventually use attosecond pulses for the array of applications scientists and industialists can use to help improve society.
I am also working on using high intensity lasers for novel accelerator techniques.
Nuclear Astrophysics at the FRIB
In the center of pre-supernovae stars numerous reactions occur, building up to the explosion. One important reaction that can help determine behavior of the star is the rate of electron capture reactions (electron goes into the nucleus and combines with a proton to make a neutron and release energy through neutrino emission). The nuclear shell model describes a nucleus as having different levels of energy for a nucleon to occupy with different possibilities of likelihood. By using the nuclear shell model my group calculated the temperature dependence of the rate of electron capture reactions. These results were published "Finite-temperature electron-capture rates for neutron-rich nuclei around N=50 and effects on core-collapse supernovae simulations".
The Stepping Stone Puzzle
The Stepping Stone Puzzle is a one person mathematical game played on an infinite square grid. The goal of the game is to get to the highest number possible on the grid, while obeying the games rules.
The rules are as follows:
To setup the game you place n 1's on the board (in any squares you choose)
To place the number k, the adjacent 8 squares (orthogonal and diagonal) must add up to exactly to k.
Numbers must be placed consecutively (must have a 2 on the board before you place a 3).
You can only place each number once (excluding ones).
The research on this puzzle was highlighted in depth on the Youtube Channel Numberphile, in the 17 minute long video "Stones on an Infinite Square Grid".
We reasoned that for each n amount of starting ones there must be a maximum value you could get to. By considering the set of these maximums we could create a sequence of integers (being the best possible score of the stepping stone puzzle, starting with n ones). My good friend and lead-creator of the puzzle, Tom Ladouceur and I calculated the first few entries to this sequence and submitted it to the online encyclopedia for integer sequences (the OEIS), where it was published and expanded on. The original sequence is A337663 , and some adaptations are A340000 , A342431 , and A342434. The results are included in the paper by Sloane"A Handbook of Integer Sequences" Fifty Years Later and the puzzle was the subject of Al Zimmermann's Programming Contest from August-November 2023, which had more than 200 programmers compete to add the most to the sequence .