Connor Occhialini – Finalist 2018 LeRoy Apker Undergraduate Achievements Award
by Jason Hancock
One of our star undergraduates, Connor Occhialini, has won national recognition as a finalist in the 2018 LeRoy Apker Undergraduate Achievements Award competition for his research in the UConn Physics department. The honor and distinction is awarded not only for the excellent research achievements of the student, but also for the department that provides the supportive environment and opportunities for students to excel in research. Connor is in fact the second Apker finalist in three years’ time (Michael Cantara was a 2016 Apker finalist). Connor graduated with a BS in Physics from UConn in May 2018 and stayed on as a researcher during summer 2018. During his time here, he developed theoretical models, helped build a pump-probe laser system, and carried out advanced analysis of X-ray scattering data which revealed a new context for an unusual phenomenon – negative thermal expansion. With these outstanding achievements, the department presented Connor’s nomination to the 2018 LeRoy Apker award committee of the American Physical Society. Connor was selected to be one of only four Apker finalists from all PhD-granting institutions in the US. With this prestigious honor, the department receives a plaque and a $1000 award to support undergraduate research. Connor is now a PhD student in the Physics Department at MIT.
Students in PHYS 1601Q, taught by Professor Jason Hancock, work during a lab that observes how an external mass can affect oscillation by producing torque. They use a device called an ioLab to record data, and use the data in a program called Mathematica for analysis. The lab was in the Edward V. Gant science complex on April 20, 2018. (Garrett Spahn/UConn Photo)
A recently renovated physics classroom in the Edward V. Gant Science Complex was built to pilot a new approach to physics education, integrating lecture with lab rather than the classical approach of separating these components.
Students and instructors apply concepts with hands-on activities throughout the lecture, practice new tools, and problem solve as a group. The space is equipped with whiteboards on every wall, and computers and projectors for each station. Though built for entry-level courses such as Physics 1601 and 1602, the end goal is to convert larger classes into this format as well, including entry-level engineering and biology classes, for a more interactive learning experience.
This article first appeared in UConn Today on April 25, 2018
Gizmodo has recently launched a new series of articles to explore how the best images in science were created and why. In a recent article in this series by Ryan F. Mandelbaum entitled, “The Making of ‘Pillars of Creation,’ One of the Most Amazing Images of Our Universe”, the author presents a classic set of images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope showing a zoomed-in view of the Eagle Nebula. The article explains some of the details about the instrument that took these images, and how a color image is obtained by combining black-and-white photographs taken at a number of different wavelengths. In the article, UConn astronomer Prof. Kate Whitaker explains why an advanced space-based instrument like the HST is required to obtain awesome views like this of our cosmic neighborhood.
The Electronic and Advanced Materials Conference (EAM) is geared towards engineers, technologists, researchers and students with an interest in science, engineering and the applications of electroceramic materials. Several MSE students and faculty attended this year’s EAM Conference held in Orlando, FL.
MSE Associate Professor and Director for Undergraduate Studies, Serge Nakhmanson, co-organized a symposium at this event entitled “Mesoscale Phenomena in Ceramic Materials.” Four UConn students including Tulsi Patel, Krishna Chaitanya Pitike, Lukasz Kuna and Hope Whitlock showcased their research.
In addition to the oral presentations, two UConn students claimed 2nd and 3rd place in the American Ceramics Society (ACerS) Electronics Division “Best Student Poster Presentation” awards. Lukasz Kuna received 3rd place for his poster entitled, “Mesoscale Simulations of the Influence of Elastic Strains on the Optical Properties of Semiconducting Core-Shell Nanowires.” Krishna Chaitayna Pitike won 2nd place for his poster, “Shape and Size Dependent Phase Transformations and Field-induced Behavior in Ferroelectric Nanoparticles.”
In response to the latter award Serge Nakhmanson said, “This remarkable work involves contributions from five UConn students (including Physics undergraduate Hope Whitelock) and an exchange student from China visiting my group. It started as a team project in the “Phase Transformations in Solids” graduate class (MSE 5305). Since the original results appeared to be significant, we decided to continue this project beyond the end of the semester to generate a publication for a peer-review scientific journal. This is now being finalized for submission. It is relatively rare to see classroom projects successfully transition into publication quality research, but this one is being well received by the community.” Department Head Bryan Huey adds, “Devising a class project that can be guided through to a publication is a testament to Professor Nakhmanson’s commitment to teaching and the hard work he inspires with these bright students.”
EAM, jointly arranged by the Electronics Division and Basic Science Division of the ACerS, focuses on the properties and processing of ceramic and electroceramic materials and their applications in electronic, electro/mechanical, dielectric, magnetic, and optical components and devices and systems.
Categories: awards, conferences, news, research, students
An artist’s rendering of hot material falling into a supermassive black hole, creating what is called the accretion disk, shown in orange. Reverberation mapping measures the time it takes light to travel between two areas of the accretion disk. The ‘light echo’ enables direct measurement of the mass of the black hole. This reverberation mapping project is the first project to weigh many black holes at once. (Image by Nahks Tr’Ehnl, Penn State University)
Surveying millions of astronomical objects, such as supermassive black holes, is a huge and time-consuming undertaking. An international team of researchers, including UConn assistant professor and astronomer Jonathan Trump and graduate student Yasuman Homayouni, have been successful in improving and speeding up this complex task of surveying and mapping our skies, in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
“In one sentence, it’s a new, industrial-scale way to weigh large numbers of supermassive black holes,” says Trump.
The effort is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, one of the most successful survey projects in the history of astronomy, which has produced the largest and most detailed three-dimensional maps of the Universe to date. Just like early map makers trying to better understand the planet we live on, modern mapping of galaxies, quasars, and supermassive black holes – the largest type of black hole, found in the center of almost all currently known massive galaxies – gives researchers insight into these phenomena and the Universe we live in. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is creating as detailed a map as possible of a portion of our sky, and has already collected data on more than three million astronomical objects.
Trump and his colleagues are working toward this goal using a method called reverberation mapping on an especially large sample of distant galaxies with supermassive black holes. The technique measures the mass of the black holes by using light echoes of gas orbiting the black holes, far outside the ‘event horizon’ within which nothing can escape falling into the black hole. With this data, he says, black holes can be described very easily.
“Mass is fundamental,” Trump says. “Once you know the mass, you can calculate almost everything there is to know about a black hole.”
It is this ability to understand so much about black holes from knowing just their mass that makes them good mapping targets. Black holes are more than just rips in space and time, and more than vacuum cleaners sucking up everything that gets too close to their event horizons, Trump explains. There are tight connections between black holes and the galaxies they exist in, so knowing the mass of a black hole allows researchers to unlock more information about the galaxy itself. For example, as black hole mass increases, the galaxy’s mass also increases in lockstep. There is also evidence that black holes act as stabilizing forces within their galaxies, and if a black hole happens to be located close to a supernova, the black hole can act to disperse the heavy elements that are created only in these exploding stars throughout the galaxy.
But there is more to learn. “We know black holes are important and they matter for the rest of the Universe, but we still don’t know exactly why,” says Trump. “They are such strange beasts in our reality.”
Speeding up the Mapping Technique
One drawback of reverberation mapping is that it requires multiple observations, over extended periods of time. With so many astronomical objects to observe and only so much equipment capable of taking such detailed measurements, large-scale mapping of this kind has not previously been possible.
“This technique is hard to do,” says Trump. “You need a lot of very well calibrated observations.”
In addition to the sheer number of objects observed for this project, the light signals observed were at times very faint because their sources of emission are at such great distances.
However, this project’s sizable dataset has increased the sample of black holes with reliably known masses by two-thirds in the past year alone – by 44 quasars to be exact. These data are quickly building on decades of existing work that had around 60 well mapped, representing only the last few percent of the history of the Universe.
The reverberation mapping data have reached deeper, around six or seven billion light years away, looking at more distant black holes. And the future of the project will go even farther, Trump says, which will translate to going even farther back in the history of the Universe.
He draws an analogy to periods in a human life to explain the distances in space and time: “We published data on 44 well-characterized black holes at about the middle age of the Universe. We hope to get to 100 [black holes] at around a quarter of the Universe’s age, so equivalent to around its early adolescence or maybe even childhood. A lot of changes happen in adolescence and childhood for us, and the Universe went through a lot of changes at that age too.”
December 19, 2017 – Colin Poitras – UConn Communications
Scientists from three major research universities successfully manipulated the outcome of a chemical reaction and, in doing so, created a rare molecular ion.
Through a process known as “controlling chemistry,” the researchers bonded an oxygen atom to two different metal atoms, creating the barium-oxygen-calcium molecular ion or BaOCa+ The same process could lead to the creation of other exotic new materials and the design of novel chemical compounds, according to the team from the University of Connecticut, University of California-Los Angeles, and University of Missouri, whose work appeared in the Sept. 29 online issue of Science.
“It’s doing chemistry with the tools of physics,” says Robin Côté, UConn physics professor and associate dean for physical sciences who co-authored the study. Côté is a leading theorist in the field of ultracold molecular ion reactions.
“Usually in chemistry you can’t see molecules react,” says Côté. “You do experiments and you get a reaction with a range of products, which can be analyzed with mass spectrometry and other tools. What our team did allowed us to image ions directly to get a much clearer picture of what is happening within the chemical reaction itself. We were able to prepare a system in an ultracold environment that was very pristine and that allowed us to see exactly how the molecules and atoms were behaving.”
Watch an animation of barium ions inside a Paul Trap.
Previous work had observed hypermetallic alkaline earth oxides consisting of an oxygen atom sandwiched between two identical alkaline earth atoms, such as barium or calcium.
But for the first time in this study, researchers observed compounds consisting of an oxygen atom bonded to two different metal atoms. Such compounds are believed to have unique properties resulting from the broken symmetry.
It’s nice to see that a phenomenon you envisioned at one time as too difficult to do, is indeed possible.— Robin Côté
The researchers used a host of equipment to accomplish the breakthrough – quantum chemistry computations, lasers, a hybrid ultracold atom-ion trap, and something called a “radially-coupled time-of-fight mass spectrometer.”
By trapping atoms and ions in an ultracold hybrid magneto-optical trap and then cooling them down to a temperature one one-thousandth degree above absolute zero, the scientists were able to observe a reaction between atoms and molecules that hadn’t been seen before.
See a real time image of crystal ions.
They used lasers to manipulate calcium atoms into a specific quantum state, which allowed the chemical reaction to proceed and the new molecules to form when they normally shouldn’t. To confirm their results, the researchers released the ions and molecules from their ultracold suspension, where they would then “fly” into the mass spectrometer to be analyzed and measured further.
The process could serve as a platform for gaining greater insight into chemical reaction dynamics. Armed with such knowledge, chemists and physicists could engineer specific chemical reactions and synthesize new products currently unavailable to us, such as more advanced chemical sensors, quantum computer processors, and medications with fewer side effects.
Joining Côté on the project were UConn research professor John Montgomery Jr., an expert in computational quantum chemistry, and postdoctoral researcher Ionel Simbotin. UCLA physics professor Eric Hudson, an expert in hybrid atom-ion trapping, served as the project’s principal investigator; and UCLA graduate students Prateek Puri (lead author) and Michael Mills, together with postdoctoral researcher Christian Schneider, performed the measurements. University of Missouri chemistry professor Arthur Suits rounded out the team.
Côté was the first to propose studying ultracold atom-ion systems in 2000, shortly after arriving at UConn. And, UConn physics professor emeritus Winthrop Smith, in 2001, was the first to propose using a hybrid ultracold ion-atom trap to conduct the observations in order to learn more about the fundamental processes of chemical reactions.
Experimental and theoretical physicists and chemists have been working in the field ever since. Lately, new advances in technology, such as the hybrid trap used in this study, are providing scientists the tools they need to progress.
To some extent, the study confirmed Côté’s and Smith’s proposal that hybrid atom-ion traps could be valuable tools for exploring the fundamental dynamics underlying chemical reactions.
“It’s nice to see that a phenomenon you envisioned at one time as too difficult to do, is indeed possible,” says Côté. “We did calculations showing this behavior should take place, and it is great to see that now confirmed in the lab.”
In the current study, the researchers spent more than 18 months trying to figure out what was driving the chemical reaction creating the new molecule. They analyzed experimental data, performed quantum chemistry calculations, and tested various theories in the lab. In many ways, it was like solving a mystery. The scientists knew the molecule could be formed because their UCLA peers had seen them in the hybrid ion trap. The challenge was trying to explain how it was happening.
The team ultimately determined the precise mechanisms that allowed the mixed hypermetallic earth oxide to form, which involved the amount of energy expended in the reaction and a certain spin of electrons.
“Most chemical reactions take place in the ground state, which is to say, a system’s lowest-energy state,” says Montgomery. “The use of quantum chemical calculations enabled us to understand that this particular reaction could only take place on the excited triplet state, which is a higher-energy state. This was then verified by experiments.”
That kind of precise knowledge of what exactly is occurring during a chemical reaction goes to the very core of controlling chemistry.
“When something reacts in chemistry, you can compute the outcome or products, but you can rarely control the process,” says Côté. “But if you are able to know exactly what is happening in that reaction, what components are rotating, what is spinning, what’s vibrating with this energy or that energy, and if you’re able to control those quantities, then it is feasible to design a reaction or a device to ensure a particular outcome most of the time.”
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (PHY-1205311, PHY-1415560, and DGE-1650604) and Army Research Office (W911NF-15-1-0121, W911NF-14-1-0378, and W911NF-13-1-0213).
UConn is one of seven universities working in this area under a multimillion-dollar research grant awarded by the Department of Defense. The MURI award, which stands for Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, also includes researchers from the physics departments at UCLA, Northwestern, and Temple, and from the chemistry departments at Georgia Tech, Emory, and Missouri.
UConn on the Front Line to Glimpse Farthest Reaches of Universe
November 27, 2017 – Elaina Hancock – UConn Communications
Two UConn physics professors will be among the world’s first scientists to explore the universe using the new James Webb Space Telescope when it is launched in 2019. The telescope, shown here at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is designed to be a large space-based observatory optimized for infrared wavelengths, and will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Two UConn physics professors will be among the world’s first scientists to explore the universe using the new James Webb Space Telescope, as announced earlier this month by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
[The] James Webb [Space Telescope] will begin teaching us entirely new things … things we don’t even know about. — Jonathan Trump
Just like the highly anticipated release of a new phone, game, or gadget, astrophysicists worldwide are eager to start using the new telescope, the latest technology for viewing distant elements of our universe, which is currently set to launch in 2019. But rather than stand in line for hours outside a store, researchers had to submit compelling proposals to secure their spot in line and an opportunity to use the new technology.
The highly competitive, peer-reviewed James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Scienceprogram was created to test the capabilities of the new observatory and to showcase the tools the telescope is equipped with. Of more than 100 proposals submitted, only 13 were chosen to participate in the early release phase, including two separate proposals involving UConn researchers Kate Whitaker and Jonathan Trump, both assistant professors of physics.
Full-resolution mosaic of the CANDELS/EGS field, the survey field for the CEERS proposal’s research. (Anton M. Koekemoer/Space Telescope Science Institute)
Passing the Telescope Torch
The James Webb Space Telescope, designed to be a large space-based observatory optimized for infrared wavelengths, will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble telescope has been a versatile workhorse and vital tool since its launch in 1990, allowing researchers to peer deep into space and get crisp glimpses of distant galaxies.
But it has technological limitations, and is not currently scheduled for any upgrades or servicing. Since its last service in 2009, Whitaker says, many researchers have been keeping their fingers crossed that it would continue functioning. Hubble is currently the only way to make observations that are required for the type of research she and many others conduct.
“A lot of my research right now is pushing Hubble to its limits,” she notes. “It’s an exciting time, because with the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope, we will really push into the frontiers of research.”
The Hubble (top left) and James Webb Space Telescope (top right). The middle portion of the image shows the relative location of the telescopes to Earth and the moon; Webb will launch much further into space. At the bottom of the image, the spectrum of light observed by both Hubble and Webb is shown, with Webb’s capabilities stretching farther into the infrared range, well past Hubble’s capabilities. (Slide from the Hubble 25th anniversary website, hubble25th.org)
The James Webb Space telescope is equipped with tools that will surpass Hubble’s capabilities. Webb will be launched further into space and will be capable of powerful imaging that will produce sharper images and be able to capture images into the infrared range.
Peering into the infrared range allows researchers to observe signatures, in the form of light, from events that happened long ago. The universe is constantly expanding and as light travels, it gets stretched over time, Whitaker explains. The further back you go, say a few billion years or so, the light is stretched so much that it will shift from the visible region of the spectrum into the infra-red.
Cutting-Edge Research, Winning Proposals
Whitaker is a science collaborator on a proposal titled “TEMPLATES: Targeting Extremely Magnified Panchromatic Lensed Arcs and Their Extended Star formation,” exploring star formation in galaxies at a distance of around 10 billion years in the past, something impossible to observe until the high resolution of the new telescope. They hope to more closely study characteristics of those distant galaxies that have until now, only been discernible in more local galaxies.
“Since we cannot travel to these distant galaxies, all we can do is sit here and wait for their light to reach our telescopes,” says Whitaker.
Trump is a co-investigator on the proposal called “CEERS: The Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey,” a plan to conduct an extragalactic survey in hopes of gaining insights into the formation of the first galaxies following the big bang. They plan to look at aspects of the assembly of galaxies, including their number density, chemical abundance, star formation, and the growth of supermassive black holes.
“Hubble has totally transformed our view of the universe and James Webb will begin teaching us entirely new things,” Trump says. “I’m incredibly excited to think about all of the things we don’t even know about, that James Webb will begin to tell us.”
The Early Release Program is aimed not only to showcase the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope right away, but to make the data publicly available as soon as possible. It is anticipated that the data will facilitate huge breakthroughs in research.
Stay tuned: 2019 promises to be an exciting year in astrophysics.
The Physics Department has recently expanded its research and teaching specialties to include Astronomy with the addition of three new junior faculty: Cara Battersby, Jonathan Trump, and Kate Whitaker. In addition to the expertise in Observational Astronomy using the latest instruments and techniques, they are also spearheading a suite of new courses in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Following on with the popularity of these course with our students, we have now introduced a new minor in Astronomy to give undergraduate majors across a broad range of majors the opportunity to make Astronomy a prominent part of their studies.
Students in PHYS 1601q, taught by Professor Jason Hancock, work during a lab that observes how an external mass can affect oscillation by producing torque. They use a device called an ioLab to record data, and use the data in a program called Mathematica for analysis. The lab was in the Edward V. Gant science complex on April 20, 2018. (Garrett Spahn/UConn Photo)
Following up on results from Physics education research conducted at MIT and elsewhere, professor Jason Hancock has begun the process of transforming the way Introductory Physics is taught at the University of Connecticut. Starting with the course PHYS 1601Q for physics majors, Prof. Hancock has developed a curriculum that integrates aspects of both lecture and lab components in an active learning environment that introduces students to all of the essential physics covered in the traditional lecture course, but in a format where students work in groups and discover the principles of classical mechanics for themselves using a hands-on approach. Experience gained with PHYS 1601Q will lay the ground work for the eventual conversion of the full suite of calculus-based Introductory Physics courses into an active learning format.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control lists radon as a primary cause of lung cancer, second only to smoking. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 20,000 deaths each year from lung cancer in the U.S. are the result of exposure to radon in the living environment. It is believed that as many as 1 in 15 homes in the continental United States have radon levels that require some form of mitigation. In spite of this, very few homes are equipped with continuous radon monitoring devices and most radiation monitoring facilities only provide feedback on time scales of weeks or even months.
The technology used in standard residential radon monitoring has not changed significantly over the past 50 years. On the other hand, development of fast detectors for particle physics experiments at large international laboratories such as the Large Hadron Collider over the past two decades has opened up new technologies for radiation detection that may result in a significant improvement in the efficiency and response time for radon detection.
UConn undergraduate Mira Varma, pictured above, is holding a part of what she hopes to assemble into a hand-held radon detector capable of detecting changes in radon concentration on the time scale of an hour, close to the time scale of the natural variation in a residential environment, rather than days or weeks. Mira is carrying out this development under the direction of UConn Physics Prof. Richard Jones.
Gizmodo has recently launched a new series of articles to explore how the best images in science were created and why. In 
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control lists