# Alumni

 James IngoldbyThomas Appelquist Postdoctoral ResearcherICTP in Trieste ItalyEFTs for Nearly Conformal Gauge TheoriesThe phenomena of electricity and magnetism, beta decay in radioactive nuclei, and the confinement of quarks within the proton can each be explained using the three different gauge theories which collectively make up the standard model. Alternative gauge theories display new kinds of exotic phenomena, which are not fully understood. For example, if the field content is chosen appropriately, a gauge theory is said to be in the conformal window, and can acquire conformal symmetry. In this case,... more Prashanta KharelPeter Rakich Device Lead and Founding Team MemberHyperlight CorporationUtilizing Brillouin Interactions for Optical Control of Bulk Acoustic Waves.The interaction between light and mechanical motion has been harnessed for a variety of scientific and technological applications ranging from studies of decoherence to precision metrology and quantum information.  Building on these accomplishments, optomechanical systems show great potential for various classical and quantum applications, including ultra-low-noise oscillators and high-power lasers to quantum transducers and quantum memories. Central to these goals of optomechanics, and... more Stefan KrastanovLiang Jiang Postdoctoral AssociateTBDWebsiteNew Approaches to Control, Calibration, and Optimization of Quantum HardwareIn this dissertation I present a number of techniques that form building blocks for the quantum manipulations spanning various levels of the quantum technology stack. We begin at the very bottom, with techniques for the universal control of a quantum harmonic oscillators. Oscillators like microwave and optical cavities are among some of the more promising physical systems on top of which to implement quantum logic. However, most of our technology until recently has been focused on manipulating... more Danielle NorciniKarsten Heeger KICP and Grainger Fellow University of ChicagoA search for eV-scale sterile neutrinos and precision measurement of the U-235 antineutrino spectrum with the PROSPECT experimentReactor experiments have been devoted to establishing the properties of the weakly-interacting neutrino. Recent neutrino oscillation experiments at low-enriched uranium (LEU) reactors suggest a disagreement between the observed electron antineutrino flux and energy spectrum when compared to leading model predictions. The ~6% flux deficit, known as the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly, measured by detectors with baselines <500 m can be explained by the addition of a beyond-the-Standard-Model... more Susan PrattSimon Mochrie Law School StudentGeorgetown UniversityDevelopment and implementation of a reversibly-interacting TRAP-peptide pair as a live-cell imaging strategyThe need to study proteins in living cells to acquire accurate information pertaining to their spatiotemporal dynamics drives the development and improvement of tools for visualization. Unfortunately, there does not exist a 'one size fits all' imaging strategy, leading to the continuous pursuit of new labeling and optical methods, with the goal of developing more widely applicable approaches that minimally disrupt the biological systems studied. Tetratricopeptide repeat affinity... more Clarke SmithMichel Devoret Postdoctoral FellowInriaDesign of Protected Superconducting QubitsControllable quantum systems that are shielded at a Hamiltonian level from the random fluctuations of their environments could provide a valuable resource for quantum information science. While these "protected qubits" promise unprecedentedly low error rates, this might come at the expense of ease of physical implementation. This thesis focuses on overcoming this apparent design problem in protected qubits within the context of superconducting circuits and their quantized... more Savannah ThaisSarah Demers Postdoctoral AssociatePrinceton Institute for Computational Science and EngineeringUtilizing Electrons in the Search for Associated Higgs Production with the ATLAS Detector: Higgs decaying to a tau pair and vector boson decaying leptonicallyThe Higgs boson was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations in 2012 using data from $\sqrt{s}$=8TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. Since the initial discovery of the $H\rightarrow 4l$ and $H\rightarrow \gamma\gamma$ decays, multiple other Higgs analyses of production modes and decay channels have reached discovery significance. This thesis describes the search for the still unobserved vector boson ($V=W^{\pm},Z$) associated Higgs production with the Higgs decaying to a tau lepton... more
 Salvatore AiolaJohn Harris Postdoctoral Research FellowIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute for Nuclear Research).Jet and heavy-flavor measurements in pp and Pb–Pb collisions with ALICEQuantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD) is the field theory that describes the nuclear interactions, responsible for holding together quarks and gluons inside the atomic nuclei. Despite significant progress made in over four decades of experimental and theoretical work since QCD was established, there remain many open questions, especially regarding the fragmentation process of quarks and gluons and the behavior of QCD in the high-temperature regime. Jets are produced from hard-scattered quarks and... more Elizabeth BoultonDaniel McKinsey Applications of Two-Phase Xenon Time Projection Chambers: Searching for Dark Matter and Special Nuclear MaterialsOver the past four decays, Liquid xenon has emerged as a popular medium for direct detection of dark matter. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment utilized a 300 kg two-phase xenon detector to set a world-leading limit on the WIMP spin-independent cross-section and WIMP mass parameter space with 332 live-days of data collection. This analysis proved especially challenging due to non-uniform, time-evolving drift fields during the WIMP search run, and it required the use of novel... more Dandan JiEric Brown Modeling of the dynamics large-scale coherent structures in the system of Rayleigh-Benard ConvectionWe test the ability of a general low-dimensional model for turbulence to predict geometry-dependent dynamics of large-scale coherent structures, such as convection rolls. The model consists of stochastic ordinary differential equations, which are derived as a function of boundary geometry from the Navier-Stokes equations. The model describes the motion of the LSC in terms of diffusion in a potential. We test the model using Rayleigh-Bénard convection experiments in a cubic container, in... more Zack LasnerDavid DeMille Postdoctoral ResearcherHarvard UniversityOrder-of-magnitude-tighter bound on the electron electric dipole momentThe electron's electric dipole moment (eEDM) is a time-reversal- (T-) violating interaction that is generically predicted to have a magnitude near or above the bounds of current experimental sensitivity in extensions to the Standard Model. We have completed an improved measurement of the electron's electric dipole moment with an order-of-magnitude greater sensitivity than the previous best measurement. The result is consistent with no interaction, |de|<1.1*10^-29 e cm. This upper... more Junjiajia LongThierry Emonet Tower Research Capital LLCFrom Individual to Collective Behavior: The Role of Memory and Diversity in Bacterial NavigationWhat is the best strategy to search in an unknown environment? Navigation with only local information available is a ubiquitous problem in nature, especially when local directional information is unreliable due to limited detection range and accuracy. Facing this challenge, many natural systems, including the chemotactic bacteria Escherichia coli, navigate by registering past information “in memory” and making temporal comparisons to bias their random walk up gradients of signal. In... more James MulliganJohn Harris Postdoctoral AssociateUniversity of California, BerkeleyInclusive jet measurements in Pb-Pb collisions with ALICEDroplets of deconfined quarks and gluons, known as the quark-gluon plasma, are produced experimentally in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Studying this deconfined matter may allow insight into a variety of open questions about the high temperature regime of QCD and the emergent behaviors of QCD. One major effort to probe the quark-gluon plasma is the study of high-momentum jets produced in an initial high momentum-transfer scattering of a heavy-ion collision. Measurements have... more Michela PaganiniPaul Tipton Postdoctoral ResearcherFacebook AI ResearchMachine Learning in High Energy Physics: Applications to Electromagnic Shower Generation, Flavor Tagging, and the Search for di-Higgs ProductionThis thesis demonstrate the efficacy of designing and developing machine learning algorithms to selected use cases that encompass many of the outstanding challenges in the field of experimental high energy physics. Although simple implementations of neural networks and boosted decision trees have been used in high energy physics for a long time, the field of machine learning has quickly evolved by devising more complex, fast and stable implementations of learning algorithms. The complexity... more Meredith PowellMeg Urry Porat FellowStanfordWebsiteThe Environments of Accreting Supermassive Black HolesThe details of black hole-galaxy coevolution can be revealed by studying the multi-scale environments of accreting supermassive black holes (SMBH). Using state-of-the-art multiwavelength surveys of complementary depths, volumes, and resolutions, I studied the galaxies and cosmic environments that host Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) to test current models of supermassive black hole fueling and feedback. On galactic scales, I investigated the morphology vs. galaxy properties of 5000 galaxies and... more