The projects available for Summer 2008 are listed below. Please rank your top 3 preferred projects and send the information to James Colgan, jcolgan@lanl.gov. We will use that information to match projects with students. Please, do not contact the mentors before arriving in Los Alamos.
| (1) Supersolid transition in solid Helium 4 and active stereo 3D visualization of large data sets | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alexander Balatsky | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project description: (1) active stereo 3D visualization of large data sets (scanning tunneling microscopy): to use active stereo visualization system to visualize scanning probes microscopy data. One would need to use our software and active stereo system for that. (2) web site development: to develop and expand the web site for our strongly correlated electrons team, http://theory.lanl.gov. (3) supersolid transition in solid Helium 4: The recent discovery of a possible supersolid anomaly in the solid Helium 4 opens up an opportunity that we see for the first time the last super state in nature, the so called supersolid state. We are trying to develop a theory of a quantum glass as a possible explanation of the data. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (2) Modeling supernova emission | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Christopher Fryer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CCS-2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supernovae are among the most energetic explosions in the Universe and play a role in nearly every aspect of astronomy. They mark the end of the life of massive stars and are the formation sites of exotic objects such as black holes and pulsars. Supernovae produce and/or disperse most of the elements heavier than helium into the universe. Their outbursts energize the universe and are believed to seed star formation. The intense brightness of the explosion has allowed scientists to use supernovae as probes of the early universe and, because of this, a number of major observational surveys have been launched to observe the emission from these outbursts. Los Alamos has undertaken a massive effort to model the infra-red, optical, ultra-violet, and X-ray outbursts from supernovae and, by June, will have thousands of theoretical supernova spectra that can be directly compared to this growing set of observations. In this project, the student will help LANL scientists understand these theoretical models and apply them to observed supernovae to gain a better understanding of these cosmic explosions. This project involves both learning the basic physics behind the emission mechanisms in the explosion and developing the computational tools to compare the theoretical and observational data. This project supports a proposed new NASA/DOE satellite mission, DESTINY, and will allow the student to work closely with observational astronomers across the country (e.g. University of Arizona, Harvard, and NASA Goddard). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (3) Computational neuroscience | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Garrett Kenyon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| P-21 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Students will study how information is represented and processed by biological neural circuits using computational and/or psychophysical techniques. The mentor has been a practicing computational neuroscientist for nearly 25 years and has mentored numerous students, most of whom started with little or no knowledge of neuroscience but with a strong desire to learn more about this exciting field. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (4) Image analysis in radiography and tomography | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanna Makaruk | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| P-21 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The student will learn and work on image analysis on different kinds of images from real experiments, with focus on Proton Radiography images, possibly muon tomography, plasma. During the internship the student will learn the image analysis and artifact removal techniques, and will perform measurements from images. Matlab and Mathematica software and their image analysis packages will be used by the student; prior familiarity with these programs would be useful, but is not required---learning of the software is planned as a part of this summer internship. The student will be encouraged to give an oral presentation at the Students' Symposium, and will get help in learning presentation skills (written and oral). The work is computer type work; no laboratory work will be performed by the student. Computer, software, office space, will be available for the student. The student will work with me in the same office, which will make mentoring and detailed interactions possible. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (5) Fluid dynamic processes in the climate system | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Balu Nadiga | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CCS-2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My interests are in understanding fluid dynamic processes that are important to our climate system. Depending on the aptitude of the student, he or she can engage in any of a variety of research problems ranging from analytical work to numerical investigations (http://public.lanl.gov/balu). Analytical work: Manipulations of governing pdes and filters to arrive at requirements for subgrid models relevant to climate; technical writing. Numerical investigations: Look into aspects of frontal processes and instabilities in ocean dynamics. Fortran, analysis of output; technical writing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (6) Visualization of complex networks | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hristo Djidjev | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CCS-3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There has been an increased interest recently in the study of complex networks because of their use in modeling a variety of phenomena such as social interactions, brain structure, protein-protein interactions, the world-wide web, and the Internet. Because of their large size, the structure of many real-life networks is hard to comprehend, unless advanced algorithms for their analysis and visualization are developed. We plan to develop methods for visualizing such large networks based on novel methods for identifying network community structure and displaying the result as a 3-D design. The project will be suitable for students with good programming skills and interest in visualization and/or combinatorial algorithms. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (7) Plasma-dependent cross sections for atomic collisional processes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| James Colgan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| T-4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The interaction of electrons and photons with the ions inside a plasma is a problem of interest to a vast range of physics disciplines. These interactions can be important over huge ranges of temperature and density inside a plasma. In the modeling of dense plasmas, of particular relevance to inertial confinement fusion and astrophysics, one usually considers a plasma kinetics model made up of the collisional processes which electrons and photons can undergo with the constituent ions. However, in almost all practical applications, the cross sections for these collisional processes are calculated as if the ions were isolated, and not influenced by the surrounding medium of a plasma at a given temperature and density. Usually, it is only after the collisional-radiative equations have been solved (which is often a large-scale calculation only feasible on supercomputers) when plasma effects are incorporated. This project aims to investigate how this model may change if the cross sections for all electron and photon collisional processes were influenced by the surrounding plasma, i.e. computed as a function of plasma temperature and density. Various simple approximations can be made to change the computation of collisional processes so that they become temperature and density dependent. The student will apply such approximations to the highly optimized and often used set of Los Alamos atomic collision codes and investigate how the cross sections vary with temperature and density. We will focus initially on very dense conditions relevant to stellar interiors and inertial confinement fusion. If time permits, the inclusion of such cross sections into a plasma kinetics model will be explored. Requirements: Some familiarity with high-performance computing would be useful but is not essential. Knowledege of Fortran or C++ would also be helpful. Any and all classes taken by the student in atomic physics and quantum mechanics will be very useful. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(8) Theoretical Investigations of atomic clusters bombarded by intense laser pulses
| Joe Abdallah & James Colgan | T-4 | Short laser pulses irradiated on Xe clusters show spectral line
radiation from inner shell transitions from Ni- to Ne-like ions. To theoretically
model these spectral lines requires large-scale calculations, beginning from computing
the atomic structure of the ions in question, and then proceeding by computing all possible collision
processes between these ions and the electrons and photons in the laser-produced plasma.
One must then solve the collisional-radiative equations which allows the populations of the
Xe ions to be found, from which the relative strengths of the spectral lines can be computed.
The Los Alamos plasma kinetics code ATOMIC, developed over many years in T-4, can
be used to simulate the spectra and derive the plasma density and/or temperature.
The student working on this project will learn of the complexity of the atomic processes involved, and
how this pertains to these intense laser-pulse experiments. Various calculations will be made on
high-performance computers to attempt to simulate the complex spectra observed in the experiment.
Requirements: Some familiarity with high-performance computing would be
useful but is not essential. Knowledege of Fortran or C++ would also be helpful.
Any and all classes taken by the student in atomic physics and
quantum mechanics will be very useful. | (9) Dynamics of Change in Global Power Generation and End-Use | Hans Ziock | EES-6 | We are working to develop an open web-based system that is intended
to investigate the Dynamics of Change in Global Power Generation and
End-Use. The work involves initiating the establishment of a novel
methodology to understand global energy systems and their evolution.
In the longer term, the project's goals will be to use and develop
state-of-the-art tools in information science and technology to
create a global real time observatory for energy infrastructure,
generation, and consumption. The observatory will establish and
update geographical and temporally referenced records and analyses of
the historical, current, and evolving global energy systems, the
energy end-use of individuals, and their associated environmental
impacts. Changes over time in energy production, use, and
infrastructure will be identified and correlated to drivers, such as
demographics, economic policies, incentives, taxes, and costs of
energy production by various technologies.
Data collection will include harvesting open databases and using
volunteered information (VI) from the public and experts. To
facilitate this global collaboration via the Internet, we propose to
develop an automated system for gathering, validating and managing
heterogeneous data and integrating it with analysis and modeling
tools. The goal is to accumulate real time detailed data in contrast
to most current efforts that rely on aggregated data and macro models
to determine resource flows, constraints, and vulnerabilities, but
do not model the dynamics of change. The prospective student would
work on the harvesting of existing data from the web and users thereof,
as well as working on the development of surveys to gather additional
information of users and organizing and summarizing the information
gathered. A very early version of some of the system can be accessed
at http://openmodel.newmexicoconsortium.org.
The student will also be encouraged to develop ideas for
investigating the dynamics of change in four systems: (i) the global
energy infrastructure; (ii) the emergence of renewable energy
sources; (iii) the end use of energy by individuals; and (iv) growth
in backup/storage solutions to intermittent supply in the developing
world viewed as pre-adaptation for renewables. The first step will be
a phenomenological analysis (growth, correlations, scaling behavior)
relating observations with proposed drivers. The second step will be
an integrated analysis of system dynamics (consumption, technology
insertion, policy and re-source constraints). Lastly, with a
comprehensive database of both power generation and end use we will
study region specific connection between awareness, technology
options, and choices made. With this understanding we will address
the following science questions:
(1) What is the nature of the coupled energy-economic-climate system?
(2) Is the emerging distributed energy generation phenomenon sustainable?
(3) What are the likely trajectories for evolution of regional energy systems?
(4) Can an open transparent web-based observatory accelerate
development and adoption of new technologies and motivate transition
to carbon-neutral options? | (10) A new definition of information and its implications | Hans Ziock | EES-6 | I am working
with Stirling Colgate and hopefully Gerard Jungman to establish a
new definition of information and understand its implications.
The goal of the new definition is to avoid the problem that virtually
all definitions of information define it in terms of information;
effectively a circular definition. We are trying to address this by
understanding how information first arose and then continued to grow.
From this understanding we are also working to find the implications
of this understanding on the future of information development and
growth for both conventional and machine-based life. | (11) Evolving Daily Activity Schedules with Methods from Artificial Life | Christof Teuscher | CCS-3 | In this project, we will study how simple daily activities of a person can be evolved and optimized by means of
artificial evolution, which is an approach inspired by the evolutionary processes in Nature. We will develop
simple
algorithms and implement them using a programming language (e.g., Matlab, Java, C/C++, etc.) that the student knows
or
prefers. This project will thus allow a student to become familiar with evolutionary algorithms, optimization techniques,
artificial life, agent-based models, and programming languages. | (12) Probing the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN | Gerd J. Kunde | P-25 | A new state of matter has been found in collisions of heavy nuclei at
relativistic velocities, called the quark gluon plasma,
a very hot system of strongly interacting quarks and gluons. A new
accelerator - called the Large Hadron Collider - will be operational
this year and will produce a plasma that is 'hotter and longer lived' ,
a new frontier.
Our team has proposed a measurement of the properties of the strongly
interacting matter by investigating a new probe: tagging a jet with a
virtual photon that decays into di-muons. These muons are subsequently
detected in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. Currently
we have a simulation which is showing that this is a 'doable'
measurement. The next step will be to simulate the process in the
environment of many
particles and the actual detector. The summer will be spent working on
the simulation and establishing signal over background ratios and preparing
material to be presented at the CEU program at the fall meeting of the
American Physical Society. | (13) Computational Atomic Physics | Dan Horner | T-04 | The goal of this project is to investigate and understand ionization
processes in atoms and small molecules. As experimental capabilities
continue to expand and more detailed measurements are performed, our
theoretical methods provide a vital interpretive and predictive
understanding.
Specifically, we use high performance computing resources to solve the
Time-Dependent Schroedinger Equation and compute "numerically
exact" benchmark results. The methods we use are based on an expansion
in spherical harmonics and very efficient numerical radial
representation. Combining these with modern numerical methods and
algorithms provides us with a true cutting edge method.
There will be opportunities both to develop and incorporate new
capabilities and also to use current codes for new and highly
publishable research. The student should have some computer programming
experience and experience with parallel computing and FORTRAN would be
a plus. | (14) Turbulence in Magnetized Plasmas | Siming Liu | T-06 | Turbulence is ubiquitous in the universe and plays important roles in
our understanding of many natural phenomena. In astrophysics, it is
carried mostly by magnetized plasmas and is responsible for
distributing energies among different components of the plasmas,
which may result in distinct emission characteristics or other
observable features. A code has been developed to study these energy
dissipation processes. The student will explore the parameter space
of this model to develop realistic astrophysical applications.
Programing experience with C++ or Fortran is required. Knowledge of
plasma physics is desirable. | |