Notre Dame's Physics REU Program

Areas of Research Include:

• Atomic Physics
• Elementary Particle Physics
• Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Nuclear Physics
• Complex Systems/Biological Physics
• Solid State/Low Temperature Physics
• Theoretical Physics

• 10 Week Appointment for the Summer
• $2,800 Stipend plus Housing

On-campus housing and a Research Travel Fund is provided. Applicants should be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Research Area Information

• Atomic Physics--The experimental atomic physics programs at Notre Dame are directed toward studies of the structure and decay characteristics of few-electron atoms and ions. This work is necessary to stimulate advances in our theoretical understanding of atoms at the most fundamental level where relativistic and field-theoretic aspects of the atoms become important.

  The program includes use of a new atomic physics accelerator laboratory at Notre Dame for ion-laser studies of atomic lifetimes. In addition, the program includes precision laser studies of the effects of parity violation in atoms due to the electro-weak interactions; fundamental spectroscopy of highly stripped heavy ions and measurements of selected excited state lifetimes at heavy-ion accelerators at the Notre Dame Tandem Laboratory and at the Argonne National Laboratory ATLAS facility; x-ray absorption studies at the Brookhaven National Laboratory National Synchrotron Light Source, and at the new Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, to test our understanding of the relativistic many-electron atomic theory. REU students will be working directly with graduate students and faculty and will gain experience in equipment preparation and testing, as well as the acquisition, handling and analysis of data.

• Elementary Particle Physics--An understanding of the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces with which they interact is sought in experiments carried out at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Laboratory,the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), all in the USA, and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN Laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland. Experiments currently underway or in development include: (1) the study of properties of the top quark, electroweak phenomena, quantum chromodynamics, and new phenomena such as Supersymmetry with the DZero experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron proton-antiproton collider; (2) development of a new scintillating fiber central tracker for the DZero upgrade for use with the Tevatron/Main Injector; (3) study of the properties of beauty particles and search for CP violation in the b-system at SLAC with the BaBar detector, and analysis software development for BaBar; (4) a search for mesons composed of gluons and quarks (such as glueballs and exotics) predicted by the theory of quantum chromodynamics; and (5) development of optical readout for the hadron calorimeter for the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. REU students will be involved with detector development and data analysis projects.

• Astrophysics and Astronomy--(1) Project GRAND (Gamma Ray Astrophysics at N.D.) is an array designed to study several topics including: ultra-high-energy cosmic gamma rays, pinpointing their possible origins in astrophysical point sources like pulsars or neutron stars; the atomic composition of normal cosmic rays by utilizing the unique tracking and identification capabilities of the array; and topics related to single muon data. Projects for the summer would include some debugging of the equipment and primarily doing the first analysis of data from this completed array. (2) Students have been involved with several projects designed to study the evolution of disks and planetary systems around very young protostars and the formation and structure of comets. These projects are trying to determine the initial conditions comets and protoplanets evolve in other stellar systems by measuring the abundance of ices such as H2O and CO in the disks of preplanetary systems. The observations are completed at the 3.0 meter Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) or the 3.8m United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea, HI and recently from the Hubble Space Telescope for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. (3) Students also have the opportunity to participate in theoretical research in cosmology and astrophysics. Past students have worked on calculations of the evolution of the big bang and the formation of background radiation. Students have also worked on general relativistic simulations of the coalescence of neutron star binary systems. Other projects include simulations of the origin and evolution of galaxies, studies of supernova explosions, and the use of gravitational microlensing to explore the structure and dark matter component of the galaxy.

• Nuclear Physics--The Notre Dame Nuclear Structure Laboratory contains a three-stage Van de Graaff accelerator that produces beams of protons and deuterons of energy up to 20 MeV, and heavy ion beams with energies of 100 MeV or more. Basic properties of nuclear structure and the manner in which nuclei interact with each other are emphasized. Areas of study include heavy-ion reaction mechanisms from quasi-elastic transfer to complete fusion, investigation of "giant resonances" excited in the inelastic scattering of high-energy alpha particles and heavy ions, and nuclear spectroscopic studies of high spin states formed in fusion reactions. A considerable part of the program focuses on questions and problems related to Nuclear Astrophysics. This program is concerned with the experimental study of nuclear structure effects and their relation to nuclear reactions and reaction sequences which occur inside of stars and explosive stellar scenarios and is responsible for the formation of elements in our universe. As part of this program we use a new low energy high intensity 4 MeV Van de Graaff at the Nuclear Structure Laboratory. This accelerator allows the direct measurements of 'stellar' nuclear reactions. We also have a program on fundamental interactions where the nucleus is used as a probe. Several experiments are under way including experiments to understand the physics of double beta decay which is a very sensitive probe of neutrino masses, experiments to detect a scalar component to the presently thought-to-be-Vector Weak Interaction, and experiments to find the origin of violation of time reversal invariance by measuring the decay of polarized slow neutrons. Students have participated successfully in various aspects of these projects during the previous summers.

• Complex Systems/Biological Physics--Using both experiments and computer simulations, we try to understand how simple physical rules generate complex structures in materials and organisms. Examples include chaos in fluid flows, the structure and evolution of foams and froths, the migrations of cells in developing embryos and the organization of computation in the brain. REU projects have ranged from experiments on frog brains and chicken eyes to the development of computer simulations of annealing in metals.

• Solid State/Low Temperature Physics--Techniques used in low-temperature physics include quantum electronic tunneling and microwave spectroscopy. In solid state physics, scanning tunneling spectroscopy is being carried out in exotic systems such as ultra-small metal particles and Buckey balls. Work in high temperature superconductor systems includes far- infrared detector research involving diode-laser-based experiments and thin-film studies. Microwave techniques are used to study field and temperature dependent dissipation effects in high temperature superconductors, and to detect small volume fractions of superconducting material in novel and exotic materials under development. Lasers are employed to study photoeffects in HTSC. Extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) and x-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) techniques are used in the study of condensed-matter systems. Areas of particular interest include the study of surfaces, interfaces, and structural phase changes. High temperature superconductors in high magnetic fields are studied by microwave and laser methods. A facility is being developed for electron energy loss spectroscopy and scanning Auger microscopy. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) systems for the growth of III-V and II-VI superconductors are used for the growth of epitaxial layers of dilute magnetic semiconductors and other related systems. Student projects involve measurements of thin- films of the high-temperature superconductors or similarly related projects.

• Theoretical Physics--Theoretical work covers a wide variety of problems in the fields of elementary particle physics, general relativity, nuclear physics, quantum electrodynamics and condensed-matter physics. Some recent investigations include studies of spontaneously broken symmetries, properties of charged rotating black holes, Lamb shift for heavy ions, coherent scattering at high energies, tunneling in superconductors, bimetallic superlattices, small-polaron hopping transport in low-mobility materials, and design of microelectronic semiconducting materials.