Undergraduate Research

Active Research in the Yale Physics Department

Research Opportunities

Keith Baker

Contact: Keith Baker (oliver.baker@yale.edu)

Website: https://physics.yale.edu/people/keith-baker

In-lab opportunities

Quantum Information Science at the Energy and Intensity Frontiers in High Energy Physics

Charles Baltay

Contact: Charles Baltay (charles.baltay@yale.edu)

Website: http://hep.yale.edu/people/charles-baltay

Remote opportunities

Astrophysics/Cosmology experiment to study the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe and the nature of Dark Energy. The experiment has two parts, one space based and one ground based

Sean Barrett

Contact: Sean Barrett (sean.barrett@yale.edu)

Website: https://opnmr.physics.yale.edu/

In-lab opportunities

Doing more with less: Accelerating multidimensional NMR and MRI experiments using iterated maps.

Meng Cheng

Contact: Meng Cheng (m.cheng@yale.edu"> m.cheng@yale.edu)

Website: https://meng-cheng.github.io/

Remote opportunities

Two projects, defects in condensed matter  and many-body open quantum systems. Directed reading on related topics, e.g.  Topological phases of matter.

Sarah Demers

Contact: Sarah Demers (sarah.demers@yale.edu"> sarah.demers@yale.edu)

Website: https://demerslab.yale.edu/

Remote opportunities

Working on the Mu2e Experiment trigger and commissioning, based at FNAL for the summer, or if during the semester, based at Yale.

Steven Girvin

Contact: Steven Girvin ( steven.girvin@yale.edu)

Website: https://girvin.sites.yale.edu/

In-lab opportunities

Theory of quantum control of qubits and oscillators. Analytical and numerical modeling to develop techniques to efficiently control the states of qubits (spins) and oscillators using microwave pulses. Prerequisite: PHYS 440 Co-requisite: PHYS 441.

Walter Goldberger

Contact: Walter Goldberger ( walter.goldberger@yale.edu)

Website: https://het.yale.edu

In-lab and remote opportunities

I would be happy to meet regularly with an advance undergraduate or two to do some directed reading in theoretical physics. While I do not have a specific research project in mind currently that is accessible to undergrads, it is possible that some interesting problem worth pursuing might come up in the course of our readings.

Jack Harris

Contact: Jack Harris ( jack.harris@yale.edu)

Website: https://harrislab.yale.edu/

In-lab and remote opportunities

  • Project 1: Calculate the whispering gallery modes in a liquid sphere
  • Project 2: Experiment with melting & sculpting optical fibers

Helen Caines & Laura Havener

Contact: Laura Havener ( laura.havener@yale.edu)

Website: https://rhig.physics.yale.edu/

In-lab and remote opportunities

**Hardware Projects**

We have various hardware R&D projects in the group related to preparing for the future Electron-Ion Collider. The EIC is a future collider coming at BNL that will study how quarks and gluons are arranged inside of nuclei, including how the nucleon mass and spin arise from this complex structure. In anticipation of the EIC, detectors need to be constructed. Our group is helping with R&D for various subsystems of the future ePIC detector. We have projects in the group contributing to these R&D efforts that will involve designing and/or testing aspects of experimental setups for these subsystems in Wright Laboratory. Examples of projects include:

  • Determining the properties of scintillator tiles for the forward hadronic calorimeter in ePIC for the future EIC
  • Characterizing photosensors for particle identification detectors in for the future EIC
  • Constructing a cosmic muon detector array for science outreach

**Software Projects**

We study the strong interaction described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). We use a high-energy QCD probe called a jet to study QCD in high-energy particle colliders (RHIC at BNL and LHC at CERN). For example, we are interested in studying the quark and gluon soup produced in high-energy collisions of heavy ions, the internal dynamics of nuclei, and the evolution of quarks and gluons into hadrons. These projects involve running Monte Carlo simulations of jets to explore aspects of their production and evolution:

  • Measuring forward jet substructure in colliders for studying QCD
  • Mapping the charged and neutral components of jets for jet substructure studies

Karsten Heeger

Contact: Karsten Heeger (karsten.heeger@yale.edu)

Website: https://heegerlab.yale.edu

In-lab and remote opportunities

  • Sensitivity calculations for the Project 8 neutrino mass experiment
  • CUORE/CUPID detector testing at Gran Sasso, Italy (summer)
  • DUNE charge readout plane testing at Wright Lab

Steven Konezny

Contact: Lane Healy ( lane.healy@yale.edu)

Website: https://konezny.sites.yale.edu/

In-lab opportunities

Materials for solar energy conversion applications

Project 1. Device Design and Characterization for Energy-Related Materials

This project involves studying charge transport in materials for solar energy conversion using various device architectures and methods. The student will learn thin-film fabrication and microscopy characterization methods, how to design and deposit electrodes, and useful techniques in the west campus clean room such as photolithography and optical profilometry.

Project 2. Theory of Charge Transport in Nanostructured Materials

Studying charge transport is important from a fundamental physics perspective, but also can provide guidance for material design. This project involves studying the mechanisms of charge transport important to nanostructured materials used for solar energy conversion. The student will learn how to apply these models to temperature-dependent electrical data. Programming experience recommended.

Project 3. Temperature-Dependent Charge Transport Measurements in Energy Materials

Our lab on west campus has a cryostat capable of accessing temperatures between ~7 and 315 K. By measuring the conductivity of materials in this range, one can decipher the mechanism of charge transport and learn valuable information about improving device performance. Because important materials for energy applications are often highly porous by design for achieving high surface area, conductivities are often very low. The cryostat is therefore equipped with highly sensitive electrical equipment capable of measuring currents on the order of femtoamps. This project is a study of charge transport as a function of temperature under various light and ambient gas conditions. Prior experience in LabView and Python would be helpful, though experience can be swapped for an interest to learn.

Project 4. Impedance Spectroscopy for Studying Materials for Energy Applications

Studying the resistance and capacitance properties of a material upon application of an ac signal can potentially provide much more information than dc methods. These data can be fit with an equivalent circuit model, each component of which corresponding to a particular physical process in the device. This project is an application of this powerful method, which allows complicated systems such as thin-film devices or electrochemical cells to be studied systematically. Some programming experience will be useful.

Steve Lamoreaux

Contact: Steve Lamoreaux ( steve.lamoreaux@yale.edu)

Website: https://lamoreauxgroup.yale.edu/

In-lab and remote opportunities

We currently have one undergrad and would like one more.

  1. Calculation of the effects of bound surface states regarding the spin polarization lifetime of optically pumped mercury that is planned to be used as a magnetometer in a neutron Electric Dipole Moment experiment.
  2. Measure the gravitational constant G toward understanding the systematic effects in current experiments.

Konrad Lehnert

Contact: Konrad Lehnert ( konrad.lehnert@yale.edu)

Website: https://physics.yale.edu/people/konrad-lehnert

In-lab opportunities

Current Interests:

  • Quantum communications between superconducting qubits
  • Mechanical systems for quantum information processing
  • Quantum enhanced sensing for dark matter searches
  • Superconducting electronics

Interested in adding an undergraduate to my group but haven’t thought in detail about the project during my lab building and set up. I plan to begin discussions with students in the early spring.

Christopher Lynn

Contact: Christopher Lynn ( christopher.lynn@yale.edu)

Website: https://lynnlab.yale.edu/

In-lab and remote opportunities

We are interested in understanding how structure and function emerge in complex living systems, particularly the brain. We study how individual neurons interact to form networks; how whole-brain activity orchestrates cognition; and how humans communicate to process information. We approach these problems from a statistical physics perspective: seeking to identify the key minimal ingredients that combine to produce collective macroscopic phenomena.

Chiara Mingarelli

Contact: Bjorn Larsen ( bjorn.larsen@yale.edu)

Website: http://www.chiaramingarelli.com/

In-lab and remote opportunities

Undergraduate students are welcome to apply to work with the Mingarelli Lab on the detection of supermassive black hole binary systems.

Simon Mochrie

Contact: Simon Mochrie ( simon.mochrie@yale.edu)

Website: https://mochrielab.yale.edu/

In-lab and remote opportunities

To build a lattice simulation of the chromatin polymers inside the nucleus of a yeast cell, including volume exclusion and looping.

David Moore

Contact: David Moore ( david.c.moore@yale.edu)

Website: https://campuspress.yale.edu/moorelab/

In-lab opportunities

We have projects aiming to test fundamental physics at the precision frontier of nuclear and particle physics. Ongoing projects are in either searching for neutrinoless double beta decay (nEXO) or using levitated optomechanical sensors as probes of new physics (SIMPLE).