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Undergraduate Research
I view
undergraduate research as both an important teaching activity and a critical
part of my overall research strategy. As such, I work with students on
problems that are directly in line with my current research program, benefiting
both the student and me.
My areas
of research are gravitational lensing and classical general relativity.
Students working with me can expect to work on projects that further our
understanding of how light rays propagate through spacetime,
and how, by studying the properties of these light rays, we may understand the
universe.
Past
students have completed numerical and analytic projects. They have
presented their work at the ATP Undergraduate Research Celebration, and
published their work as senior theses, in the Undergraduate Review, and in
professional journals. Nine of my former undergraduate students have
enrolled in graduate school after completing their studies. Past students
have also attended regular group meetings with my collaborator, Professor Ian Dell'Antonio, and his students at Brown University.
Current
Undergraduate Research Students:
Megan Lalumiere will conduct research on Type-D metrics, Godel-style metrics and coordinate transformations as
supported by an ATP Summer Grant in Summer 2019
Contact me . . .
Past Undergraduate
Research Classes:
Physics 422: Computer Simulations in the Physical Sciences (Spring
2017) – large group of
students! Students worked on a number of
research problems including how to best divide work across a multi-processor computer
cluster, how to examine where caustics have occurred in light rays, how lights
rays move in the Godel Universe, and how to create or
model galaxy clusters.
Physics 422: Computer Simulations in the Physical Sciences
(Fall 2011) -- Alex Roche,
Kathryn St. Laurent, Joseph Fitzgerald, Dino Dourountoudakis,
and Erkan Gulturk.
This class re-examined my paper with Bryan Campbell that looked at combining
Hubble Space Telescope with ground-based images to detect the location of
matter in a cluster from gravitational lensing (shear)
data. This class improved on my work with Bryan in two ways. First the actual
code written by members of the class is far superior and more efficient than
the code Bryan and I wrote originally. Second, students in the class were able
to show that including noise in the shear did not reduce the ability to detect
the matter distribution. This class was supported by an ATP Semester Grant. The
class made a presentation at the end of the semester, and two students will
continue working on the problem in the spring 2012 semester. .
Physics 422: Computer Simulations in the Physical Sciences
(Fall 2008) -- Scott Johnson, John
Rossman, Rob Schweitzer, Charles Harnden,
and Scott Schlef. The class computed the
optical wave-fronts and wave-front singularities in Kerr (rotating black-hole)
space-times, making still pictures and animations. The data for the
wave-fronts was generated using adaptive step-size C++ code that the students
wrote during the fall term. The animations were produced using
Mathematica. In fall 2008, the class received an ATP Course Grant that
was used to purchase student versions of Mathematica and technical books.
Continuing in spring 2009, Scott Johnson and John Rossman
received ATP Semester Grants which were used to discuss the project with Dr.
Arlie Petters of Duke University. Work is
continuing to produce pictures for Dr. Petters for
his upcoming book. The class presented at the Undergraduate Research
Symposium in April 2009. More
results can be found here.
Other Possible
Undergraduate Research Projects:
Examination of how to
best determine image locations (and create black hole shadow images) in
non-perturbative gravitational lensing.
Examination of
detailed caustic structures for non-symmetric galaxy clusters.
Examination of
multiple lens plane Jacobian from the non-perturbative standpoint. How
does the shear from multiple lensing events add up? (follow-up to Frittelli,
Kling, & Newman)
Formation of strong
lensing arcs and flexion from thick lens approach to gravitational lensing
(follow-up to L. Bianchini)
Past Undergraduate
Research Projects:
Riordan Ernesti, Undergraduate
Research Course, ‘Modeling galaxy formation using Newtonian dynamics’ (Spring
2019)
Robert Stanton, Undergraduate Research Course, ‘Initial studies in solving the
non-perturbative lens equation. (Fall 2019)
Tyler Martell, Undergraduate Research Course, ‘Investigation of the Geodesic
Deviations Equations in the context of weak gravitational lensing.’ (Spring
2018)
Eric Grotzke, ATP Summer Research Grant, Honors Thesis, co-author on two
papers in GRG, ‘Wave fronts of point
sources near Kerr Black Holes’ (Summer 2016-Spring 2017)
Kevin Roebuck, NASA Space Grant,
Honors Thesis, co-author on two papers in GRG, ‘Wave front singularities in the Godel
solutions to the Einstein Field Equations.’ (Summer 2016-Spring 2017)
Aly Aly, ATP Summer Research Grant, co-author paper in GRG, Honors
Thesis, ‘Geodesic Deviation in
the Newman Penrose Spin Coefficient Formalism’ (Summer and Fall 2014)
Tim Waite, NASA Space Gant,
co-author paper in GRG, ‘Beowulf cluster
modeling of photon wave-fronts near Kerr Black Holes.’ (Summer 2014)
Josh Napolitano, Undergrad Research Course, ‘Comparison of gravitational lensing
signatures of singular solutions’ (Spring 2013)
Jared Buckley, Undergrad Research Course, ‘New
Investigation of the Lorenz Equations in a Chaotic Attractor’ (Fall 2012)
Alex Roche, Summer ATP Award, "Computer Code in Support of
Gravitational Lensing"(BSU Summer 2012)
Erkan Gulturk
completed work on multi-grid methods for interpolation between the grids -
follow-up to Physics 422 Fall 2011 Course.
Adelmar DoCanto, Summer ATP Award,
NCUR, Undergraduate Review, "Can weak lensing observations constrain
matter density fall-off (truncation) at large radii?"(BSU Summer 2011)
Scott Schlef, Summer ATP Award, NCUR, senior Honors Thesis, "Dealing
with Multiple Lens Planes in Gravitational Lensing." (BSC Summer and
Fall 2009)
John Rossman, ATP Semester Grant to attend a research meeting with Dr. Arlie
Petters of Duke University in Spring 2009,
"Examination of the Kerr black hole structure -- implications for
wave-fronts." (BSC Spring 2009)
Scott Johnson, ATP Semester Grant to attend a research meeting with Dr. Arlie
Petters of Duke University in Spring
2009, "Advanced wave-front animations in Kerr space-times."
(BSC Spring 2009)
Chris Cepero, Summer ATP Award, NCUR, Undergraduate Review,
"Accuracy of thin-lens approximation for weak gravitational
lensing." (BSC Summer 2008)
Louis Bianchini, Summer ATP Award, NCUR, Undergraduate Review, General Relativity and Gravitation,
"Modeling image distortion using the optical scalar equations of general
relativity for "realistic" matter distributions." (BSC,
Summer and Fall 2008)
Ren Li, senior independent study, "Investigating the Ricci and
Weyl Curvature Tensors in the Weak Lensing Context." (BSC,
Spring 2007)
Bryan Campbell, Summer ATP Award, senior Honors Thesis, NCUR, Physical Review D,
Undergraduate Review, "Integrating the Bianchi Identities for Weak
Gravitational Lensing." (BSC, Summer and Fall 2006)
Jason Tower, Summer ATP Award, senior Thesis, NCUR, submitted to
Undergraduate Review, "Light Cones for Spherically Symmetric Black
Holes." (BSC, Summer and Fall 2006)
Niel Roza, senior independent study, "Non-perturbative
gravitational lensing using three dimensional mass models." (BSC,
Spring 2006)
George Levesque, senior Honors
Thesis, "Numerical approaches for moving lenses." (BSC, Spring
2005)
Karen Kelleher, senior
independent study, "Nonlinear dynamics and an electronic circuit."
(BSC, Spring 2005)
Brian Keith, Summer ATP
Award, senior Honors Thesis, NCUR, Undergraduate Review, Classical and Quantum Gravity, "The
Bianchi identity and weak gravitational lensing." (BSC, Summer and
Fall 2004)
William Plick, Keck Summer
Research Grant and senior Honors Thesis, "Numerical approaches to
cosmological lensing." (Connecticut College, Summer and Spring 2004)
Matthew Veigas, senior Honors
Thesis, "Gravitational lensing for Kerr Spacetime."
(Connecticut College, Fall 2001 - Spring 2002)