REU Session: 2021
Prof. Bill Holzapfel
Students will be engaged in the analysis of data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT is a 10-meter dish located at the South Pole which is currently mapping Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with an unprecedented combination of resolution and sensitivity. We have recently discovered that emission from some satellites can produce rare detectable signals in the data that we would like to robustly remove [...]
Prof. Dan McKinsey
The particle nature of dark matter is not known, but the mass range of MeV/c^2 to GeV/c^2 range is relatively unexplored. Low-background detectors with low energy thresholds may be used to search for nuclear recoils induced by such dark matter particles. Superfluid helium is a promising target for such an experiment, but characterization of its scintillation, phonon, and roton signals is needed at sub-keV energies [...]
Prof. Saul Perlmutter
Our research group is working on multiple projects that are measuring the properties of our expanding universe with the goal of understanding the underlying physical laws. Most of the projects design instruments and collect data on supernova explosions in distant galaxies [...]
Prof. Matt Pyle
If dark matter is composed of particles with a mass anywhere throughout the 12 order of mass range from a neutrino to a proton, then their interactions with matter are both rare and deposit an incredibly small amount of energy in the detector [...]
Prof. Hartmut Haeffner
Quantum computers promise to tackle problems impossible to solve with classical computing resources. For this, quantum computers control quantum information encoded in quantum systems. This project aims at improving quantum […]
Prof. Holger Mueller
Atom interferometry presents a way to leverage quantum mechanics to test gravity and fundamental physics. We have recently shown that the light bound by a pair of mirrors can be used to levitate an atom in a quantum superposition of two places at once [...]
Prof. Dan Stamper-Kurn
Laser light can be used to extract kinetic energy from neutral atoms in a vapor, and thereby to cool them down to temperatures in the micro-Kelvin range and below. At […]
Prof. Hernan Garcia
As cells multiply in embryonic development they adopt different fates such as those of cells in our brain, muscles and blood. We now know that these cellular decisions are not so much based on which gene each cell expresses, but on when, where and how fast these genes are expressed [...]
Prof. Oskar Hallatschek
The dynamic of the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed severe short-comings in our predictive understanding of how diseases spread. A key unresolved question is "How predictable is epidemic spread?" [...]
Prof. Na Ji
The student will learn to use high-throughput automatic processing pipelines to analyze images of neurons. These images are collected by advanced optical microscopes from awake behaving animals [...]
Prof. Joel Moore
In this theoretical condensed matter project, students will study and model properties of quantum materials, such as copper oxides, which show a rich variety of quantum phases, including high temperature superconductivity [...]
Prof. Jeff Neaton
Using density functional theory and related methods, and working closely with experimental groups, we will explore the structure, photophysics, transport properties of novel quantum materials [...]
Prof. Zi Q. Qiu
In this REU project, students will learn the basic principle of Magneto-Optic Kerr Effect (MOKE) and apply MOKE to the study of magnetic ultrathin films [...]
Prof. R. Ramesh
We are exploring electric field manipulation of spins in a ferroelectric medium using dilute Fe^3+-doped PbTiO3 and other polar materials as model systems [...]
Prof. Mike Zaletel
When atomically thin layers of graphene are stacked with a relative twist between them, the moire pattern formed by the beating between their crystal structures generates an superlattice for the motion of the electrons in the bilayer [...]
Dr. Heather Crawford
Berkeley’s development of the cyclotron under the leadership of Lawrence arguable gave birth to modern subatomic physics. The 88” cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley Lab continues to be used for nuclear physics experiments [...]
Prof. Wick Haxton
The discovery of neutrino oscillations requires neutrinos to be massive, and the small scale of neutrino mass is suggestive of new physics residing at energy scales far beyond the Standard Model [...]
Prof. Gabriel Orebi Gann
A full understanding of large (10–100 kton) detectors requires precision Monte Carlo modelling, tracking every individual photon from production to detection [...]
Prof. Ori Ganor
This is part of a program in string theory that explores what happens to extended objects in (eleven dimensional) M-theory when subjected to extreme (higher dimensional analog of) magnetic flux [...]
Prof. Heather Gray
Possible projects could include searches for the coupling of the Higgs boson to charm quarks, using novel approaches from machine learning to identify charm quarks [...]
Prof. Hitoshi Murayama
In the project, we will explore new theories of dark matter, their phenomenological implications, and experimental tests [...]
Prof. Haichen Wang
In this project, an undergraduate student will contribute to a collider physics measurement using data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC [...]
Prof. Stuart Bale
The plasma physics of solar coronal heating and wind acceleration is still poorly understood. The NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission was launched in late 2018 into an orbit that […]