ADVISORS AND PROJECTS FOR 20212

• Dr Mehmet Atakan Gürkan (Astrophysics) -- NOT accepting students this semester

  • For information on the projects see this link.

• Dr Osman Barış Malcıoğlu (Computational Materials Science/Solid State Physics) -- all spots filled, no longer accepting students

  • For information on the projects see this link.

• Dr Sinan Kaan Yerli (Astronomy/Astrophysics)

  • Quoted directly from Dr Yerli : "Bring me 5 popular/interesting topics on astronomy, astrophysics, I will lead you to produce a work schedule and a topic."

• Dr Alpan Bek (Photonics/Optoelectronics)

  • "We constantly provide opportunities for 400 and 415 projects in the NanoOptics Research Lab. The themes of research vary depending on the available research funding. These themes span a variety of light-matter interaction topics such as, yet not restricted to, plasmonics, nearfield microscopy, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, photovoltaic light management, bionanophotonics, nanoscale laser materials processing, quantum nanophotonics, etc. Both experimental and numerical simulation projects might be available. As most of these research topics are highly demanding, those who wish to perform 400 project under supervision of Alpan Bek in the Nanooptics Research Lab are strongly advised to establish contact at least 2 semesters before the actually desired 400 project semester. Last minute inquiries will unfortunately have to be returned. A minimum GPA of 2.65 is required at the time of application."

• Dr Hande Toffoli (Computational Materials Science) -- all spots filled, no longer accepting students

  • • Machine-learning models for the prediction of molecular spectra (ALL SPOTS FILLED!)

• Dr Bilge Demirköz (High Energy Physics)

  • Cosmic rays (measurement and/or simulations)

  • Particle detectors (spark chamber, scintillators, pin diodes)

  • Random number generators (classical and quantum)

  • Radiation damage to crystalline structures and electronics

ADVISORS AND PROJECTS FOR 20211

• Dr Ahmet Oral (Experimental Condensed Matter)

  • Littrow configuration tunable external cavity diode laser with fixed direction output beam: An external cavity laser diode [1] will be designed and constructed for 633nm & 894nm operation.

• Laser diode temperature and power will be stabilised & controlled with a simple electronic circuit

• If all goes well the laser parameters will be controlled with a wireless microcontroller

[1] Littrow configuration tunable external cavity diode laser with fixed direction output beam, C. J. Hawthorn, K. P. Weber, and R. E. Scholten, REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS VOLUME 72, NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 2001, pp. 4477

• • Design & Construction of 1-1-1 Tesla Superconducting Vector Magnet: A superconducting magnet giving 1T field in each X Y Z direction simultaneously will be designed and constructed in this project. You will:

    • • Design the magnet using FEA tools or by a small Python code using Biot Savart Law operating at 4K in a closed cycle cryostat with following specs:

      • 52mm cold bore in Z direction

      • Split pair XY magnets

      • 0.1% uniformity in Z direction in 10mm Diameter Spherical Volume (DSV)

      • 1% uniformity in XY directions in 10mm Diameter Spherical Volume (DSV)

• Wind the magnet at NanoMagnetics and vacuum impregnate it in epoxy

• Test the magnet at 4K & determine parameters

  • Maximum Field in XYZ

  • Maximum Ramp Rate

  • Field Uniformity in XYZ axes
    

• Design & Construction of Cs Magnetometer: A Caesium magnetometer will be designed and constructed in this project. You will:

• Design the magnetometer with a Cs vapour cell with a lamp or laser

• Build it

• Measure its performance and noise

• Dr Sadi Turgut (Quantum Information/Quantum Computing)

  • Bring me any project that makes use of IBM's online quantum computers. These can be a quantum computation problem as well as simulation of a quantum phenomenon, testing of Bell's or contextuality inequalities, etc.

• Dr Mehmet Atakan Gürkan (Astrophysics) -- NOT accepting students this semester

  • For information on the projects see this link.

• Dr Osman Barış Malcıoğlu (Computational Materials Science/Solid State Physics) -- all spots filled, no longer accepting students

  • For information on the projects see this link.

• Dr Sinan Kaan Yerli (Astronomy/Astrophysics)

  • Quoted directly from Dr Yerli : "Bring me 5 popular/interesting topics on astronomy, astrophysics, I will lead you to produce a work schedule and a topic."

• Dr Alpan Bek (Photonics/Optoelectronics)

  • "We constantly provide opportunities for 400 and 415 projects in the NanoOptics Research Lab. The themes of research vary depending on the available research funding. These themes span a variety of light-matter interaction topics such as, yet not restricted to, plasmonics, nearfield microscopy, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, photovoltaic light management, bionanophotonics, nanoscale laser materials processing, quantum nanophotonics, etc. Both experimental and numerical simulation projects might be available. As most of these research topics are highly demanding, those who wish to perform 400 project under supervision of Alpan Bek in the Nanooptics Research Lab are strongly advised to establish contact at least 2 semesters before the actually desired 400 project semester. Last minute inquiries will unfortunately have to be returned. A minimum GPA of 2.65 is required at the time of application."

• Dr Hande Toffoli (Computational Materials Science) -- all spots filled, no longer accepting students

  • • Machine-learning models for the prediction of molecular spectra (ALL SPOTS FILLED!)

• Dr Serhat Çakır (Plasma Physics)

  • • High Power Microwave Sources

    • Plasma Etching

    • Plasma Thrusters

    • Plasma Based Water Purıfication

    • Plasma Antennas

    • RF Conductivity of Plasma

    • Two-Stream Instabilities

• Dr Bilge Demirköz (High Energy Physics)

  • Cosmic rays (measurement and/or simulations)

  • Particle detectors (spark chamber, scintillators, pin diodes)

  • Random number generators (classical and quantum)

  • Radiation damage to crystalline structures and electronics

AdvisOrs and Projects for 20202

• Dr Bilge Demirköz (High Energy Physics)

  • • Cosmic rays (measurement and/or simulations)

    • Particle detectors (spark chamber, scintillators, pin diodes)

    • Random number generators (classical and quantum)

• Dr Mehmet Atakan Gürkan (Astrophysics)

  • Comparing and Improving Kepler solvers

Solving Kepler’s equation using universal variables has wide range applications in celestial mechanics simulations. Unfortunately, there are also many different implementations of this problem and it is not clear which one to choose while setting up a simulation. In this project, you will carry out a comparison of (some of) the available methods and work on ways to improve them. To do this, you will need to integrate the available methods into a common framework, either an existing one such as REBOUND or develop your own. If time and your skills permit, you could also develop an integrator of your own, but this is much less of a priority than improving the existing and commonly used codes. The main aim of the project is to become familiar with available Kepler solvers to make way for more complicated celestial mechanics simulations.

Required background:(1) Familiarity with basic numerical techniques such as Newton-Raphson method, (2) Good command of a programming language, preferably Python, C or Common LISP (3) A familiarity with CPU level instructions such as SIMD, SSE, AVX is a big plus; this seems to be the easiest route to improving existing codes.

• • Solving Schrödinger’s Equation with Splitting Methods

In this project you will develop a code (or adapt an existing one) to solve Schrödinger’s equation with the so-called splitting methods. These methods rely on the existence of solutions for each part of the Hamiltonian that governs the evolution of the system, even when the solution for the total Hamiltonian is not available. For the time dependent Schrödinger's equation, the momentum part of the Hamiltonian is simply the free particle, whereas the potential part is trivial to solve via an exponentiation. Even though the logic of this solution is trivial, there are many intricacies involving the Fourier transform to be used in the free particle part. After developing the solution for simple 1-dimensional potentials, you are expected to generalize this to either higher dimensions or (preferably) to time-independent Schrödinger’s equation using an imaginary time scheme.

Required background: (1) Familiarity with Schrödinger’s equation and its solution in terms of energy basis functions, (2) Good command of a programming language, preferably Python, C or Common LISP (3) Increased familiarity with the Fourier transform would help a lot.

• • Two more ideas related to Monte Carlo techniques and particle simulations (both based on Ulam's writings!)

No formal description available at the moment, please contact Dr Gurkan for further information.

• Dr Osman Barış Malcıoğlu (Computational Materials Science/Solid State Physics)

  • • Quantum computation of silicon electronic band structure using Qiskit.

Since commercial quantum computers are getting more common and many universities have already bought them, there are many hybrid classical-quantum algorithms in physics and quantum chemistry literature that promise simulations of fermionic systems beyond the capability of modern classical computers. The aim of this project is to use Qiskit (https://qiskit.org/) to simulate a Quantum circuit, and attempt the Si tight binding problem (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03807.pdf)

Prerequisites: Good python programming skills, good Quantum Theory background, basic Condensed matter physics, Tight binding theory.

• Molecular dynamics simulations of Silicon surface using Machine learning pseudo potentials.

Using Machine learning potential energy surface of a system of atoms is becoming a popular way of creating interatomic potentials. There are many alternatives already implemented in LAMMPS (https://lammps.sandia.gov/). The aim of this project is to survey the efficiency of various methods for describing functionalized Silicon surfaces/interfaces. (J. Phys. Chem. A2020, 124, 731−745)

Prerequisites: Basic HPC skills (you can see my web page, CMCC for some pointers). Basic scripting skills, basic Condensed matter physics.

• Dr Sinan Kaan Yerli (Astronomy/Astrophysics)

  • • Quoted directly from Dr Yerli : "Bring me 5 popular/interesting topics on astronomy, astrophysics, I will lead you to produce a work schedule and a topic."

• Dr İsmail Rafatov (Plasma Physics)

  • • Quantitative universality in chaotic systems: Feigenbaum constants

AdvisOrs and Projects for 20201

• Dr Serhat Çakır (Plasma Physics)

  • • Vircator

    • Plasma Antennas

    • Plasma Thrusters

    • Magnetrons

• Dr Bilge Demirköz (High Energy Physics)

  • • Cosmic rays (measurement and/or simulations)

    • Particle detectors (spark chamber, scintillators, pin diodes)

    • Random number generators (classical and quantum)

• Dr Ahmet Keleş (Solid State Physics)

NOTE that Dr. Keleş is looking to take one student only.

• • • Interplay between p-wave pairing, disorder and spin-orbit coupling in unconventional superconductors

    • Emergence of decoherence in random unitary circuits

    • Many-body scars, PXP model and their relation to exactly solvable one dimensional models

• Dr Osman Barış Malcıoğlu (Computational Materials Science/Solid State Physics)

  • • Background Oriented Schlieren: https://youtu.be/VCUN59x0LF4

    • Simulated C=O tip potential surface mapping

    • NiOx conductivity (already taken)

    • Open to Compliant mechanisms/Soft robotics/Auxetic materials ideas

• Dr Sinan Kaan Yerli (Astronomy/Astrophysics)

  • • Quoted directly from Dr Yerli : "Bring me 5 popular/interesting topics on astronomy, astrophysics, I will lead you to produce a work schedule and a topic."

• Dr Osman Yılmaz (Atomic Physics)

  • • Heavy Ion Fusion Cross Section in TDHF Method

AdvisOrs and Projects for 20191

• Dr Osman Barış Malcıoğlu

  • • (Software development:) Neural network assisted inverse pde solver for bridging the gap between theoretical spectroscopy and experiment: This project aims to contribute to a project intended to test various excitation models with experimental data. The project will constitute either scaling up TDDFT, or comparing experiment with various theoretical models. Requires good programming skills.

Prerequisites: Basic theoretical spectroscopy. Basic knowledge about the inverse partial differential equation problem. Good programming skills in Python 3, Fortran, or C. Experience in using open source libraries and experience in working HPC environment.

References:

Optical Properties of solids (Mark Fox)

Solving PDEs in python (The Fenics Tutorial 1) Simula Springer

Jens Berg, K. N. "Neural network augmented inverse problems for PDEs." arXiv:1712.09685 [stat.ML].

• • • (Software development/3D printing): Soft robotics/compliant mechanisms for solar tracking. The aim of this project is to explore biomimetic soft robotics/compliant mechanics for highly reliable, low energy solar trackers.

Prerequisites: Enthusiasm with SLS printers. Must be willing to learn slicers and CAD software such as Fusion 360. Experience with software development (for designing the compliant mechanism) .

• Dr Hande Toffoli

  • • • Fundamentals of Nanoscale Friction

      • Implementing the dipole-dipole interaction in the density functional theory (computational project)

AdvisOrs and Projects for 20182

• Dr Atakan Gürkan

  • • • Project on computational work, in particular machine-learning -- see Dr Gürkan for details.

• Dr Çiğdem Erçelebi

  • • • Study of Contact Resistivity Measurement Methods and the Application of Transfer Length Method (TLM) to Thin Film Solar Cell Structures

      • Electrical, Optical Characterization of Thin Film Solar Cells

• Dr Mehmet Zeyrek

  • • • Machine-learning and its use in Particle Physics