UCD School of Physics Summer Internships Projects 2015

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1 UCD School of Physics Summer Internships Projects 2015 Project 1 Title: "Avalanches and magnetic charge dynamics in spin ice" Supervisor: Prof Hans Benjamin Braun Description: Using an in-house developed code and analytic techniques, the project will aim to understand the fundamental properties of charge avalanches and emergent monopoles in spin ice, and to investigate how these effects may be harnessed for charge logic applications. Project 2 Title: Development of novel nanomaterials using self-assembly Supervisor: Dr James Rice Description: The project centres on the devlopment and study of self-assembled peptide nanotubes, studied using optical spectroscopy microscopy Project 3 Title: Design and Manufacturing of Optically Active Nanostructures for Next Generation Solar Cells Supervisor: Dr Dominic Zerulla Description: Optically active nanostructures can be used to excite Surface Plasmons supporting the confinement of light beyond the diffraction limit. Such structures can be manufactured at the nanoscale via e-beam lithography and/or focused ion beams and imaged via electron microscopy (TEM/SEM), Scanning Nearfield Techniques (e.g. ASNOM) and Photo Emission Electron Microscopy(PEEM). All techniques are available in-house. Project 4 Title: "Polarimetry for the analysis of birefringent biological samples" Supervisor: Dr Brian Vohnsen Description: Birefringence is inherent in the cornea do the internal organization of collagen fibrils. This can be used to examine optical properties and deviations from a perfect packing that may result in modified birefringence and a possible lack of transparency. In this summer project optical analysis of birefringence will be carried out with the aim of measuring partially, or completely, the Muller matrix of tissues and its implementation in advanced optical microscopy. Such preliminary studies may open up new pathways for diagnostic imaging and treatment of eye disease. 1

2 Project 5 Title: Lecture demonstration design Supervisor: Dr Tom McCormack Description: Lecture demonstrations are a highly effective away to can help reinforce students learning. This project seeks to develop a series of lecture demonstrations in basic physics concepts especially in optics, astronomy, and thermodynamics. The student will help design, develop and document a series of demonstrations that are robust, reliable and sufficiently large that they are visible in the largest lecture theatres in UCD. Project 6 Title: Building an auto-correlator Supervisor: Dr Tom McCormack Description: This project involves the design, construction and testing of a home made auto-correlator to measure pulse lengths of 20 ps at energies of a few milli-joules. The basis of the method is the detection of multi-photon emission from over lapping laser pulses. The student will gain practical experience in designing and building optical experiments as well as working with high power lasers. Time permitting the same technique may also be applied to extend the system to allow pump probe measurements on suitable chemical species. Project 7 Title: Space Science & Technology - feasibility study for an Irish Small Satellite programme Supervisor: Dr Deirdre Coffey Description: Space is a growth industry. It is driven by the fields of Astronomy and Earth Observations, as well as the increasing demands of modern living such as satellite communication and navigation. Many smaller countries are becoming space-faring nations by launching so-called Small Satellites. The UCD Space Science & Technology Group offers a summer undergraduate internship opportunity to conduct a feasibility study for an Irish Small Satellite programme. See ucd.ie/spacescience for further details. Project 8 Title: "Controlling a crowd with orienting signals" (computer simulation) Supervisor: Dr Vladimir Lobaskin Description: The project involves computer simulation of self-propelled particles, which mimic the motion of a group of bacteria, animals, or humans in confinement. We model a situation when signals are sent to the group to drive it in certain direction. The task is to determine how the collective response (time of complete reorientation) depends on individual characteristics like the susceptibility to the signals and on the build up of collective action. Some basic programming skills and familiarity with linux would be an advantage. 2

3 Project 9 Title: "Interaction of nanobubbles" (computer simulation) Supervisor: Dr Vladimir Lobaskin Description: It is believed that nanobubbles can appear in various industrial and biological processes but they are extremely difficult to observe. Due to polar character of the air-water interface, air bubbles in water tend to be charged and move in external electric fields and interact with each other at large distances, although their interaction is indirect. The task is to simulate a bulk of water with bubbles inside and extract characteristics of their interaction from the distribution statistics. The modelling will be performed using the ESPResSo simulation package. Some basic programming skills and familiarity with linux would be an advantage. Project 10 Title: Selective deposition of nanomaterials via ferroelectric lithography Supervisor: Dr Brian Rodriquez Description: Ferroelectric materials have a spontaneous polarisation and a corresponding bound surface charge, which can be used for the adsorption of charged objects from solution via a screening mechanism. The project involves the use of optical and scanning probe microscopy approaches to investigate the potential of using periodically charge-patterned ferroelectric templates to guide the selective deposition of nanomaterials and probe molecules (graphene, carbon nanotubes, fluorescent particles, etc.). Project 11 Title Advanced Laboratory Development Supervisor: Dr Emma Sokell Description: This project will involve upgrading existing experiments and the development of new experiments for the advanced laboratory. The work can be tuned to suit particular areas of interest but will require both experimental testing and documentation development. Project 12 Title: Timing analysis of pulsars with the INTEGRAL gamma-ray observatory Supervisor: Dr Antonio Martin-Carrillo Description: INTEGRAL is a gamma-ray observatory launched by the European Space Agency in October Since then, it has been orbiting Earth in a highly eccentric 72 hour orbit, which allows for long exposure times and thus, deep field and highly sensitive gamma-ray observations. INTEGRAL payload consists of two main gamma-ray instruments, the spectrometer SPI and the imager IBIS, and two X-ray monitors JEM-X. These instruments provide INTEGRAL with a wide energy range covering from 3 kev up to 10 MeV. One of the goals of INTEGRAL is the temporal and spectral study of pulsars. Pulsars are 3

4 compact objects with high densities and strong magnetic fields that present pulsed emission with periods ranging from milliseconds to hundreds of seconds. The aim of this project is to study the evolution of the pulse period of several pulsars of different origin (rotation-powered and accretion-powered) over the span of several years. Project 13 Title: Optical variability of blazars observed by UCD's Watcher robotic telescope Supervisor: Prof Lorraine Hanlon Description: Blazars are compact astrophysical sources, believed to be powered by the accretion of material onto a supermassive black hole at the centre of an active, giant elliptical galaxy. Key defining characteristics of blazars include their rapid variability at all wavelengths and their high luminosities, both characteristics that may be enhanced by relativistic beaming effects. The Watcher robotic telescope in South Africa has been monitoring a number of blazars over several years and so far more than 20,000 images have been analysed. In this project, the remaining set of blazar data will be analysed using the 'Pynapple' pipeline, developed in-house, and all data will be made publicly available on the Watcher website. If time permits, these observations will be combined with those from other observatories, and time series analysis will be carried out. In Galactic black hole sources, the variability time-scale has been shown to be connected to the black hole mass. If data over a sufficiently long time baseline are collected, it will be possible to test this hypothesis for blazars and potentially deduce, or at least constrain, the mass of the supermassive black hole. Project 14 Title: Spectroscopy of Tiny Fireballs Supervisor: Dr Fergal O'Reilly Description: In this project the student will use high power pulsed lasers to produce plasmas of 1 million degrees. These plasmas produce very specific photon output in the soft x-ray region of the spectrum depending on materials used and laser parameters, and the project will include vacuum spectroscopy and an introduction to atomic structure calculations, to discover more about how to control the light output. This type of radiation is of interest for bio-imaging, materials science and semiconductor processing. Project 15 Title: Theoretical and computational modeling of proteins and protein-protein interactions: Applications to diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Supervisor: Dr N Vio Buchette Description: The study of protein folding via simulation ( in silica ) faces challenges in the separation between the physical time-scales of folding and the accessible time-scales of simulation. We developed recently new algorithms based on coarse master equations (CME), where configurational space is discretized into a network of Markovian states, such that the mean lifetime of each state is much larger than the transition time between the states. 4

5 This project - suitable to 1 or 2 students working separately or as a team - will involve designing and running simple molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the CME-based formalism, using Linux workstations and supercomputing clusters, with the aim to improve the speedup of typical MD runs. Applications will study simple MD trajectories of diabetes or Alzheimer's diseases Abeta peptides for understanding their conformational dynamics and their propensities to form amyloid nanofibrils. Project 16 Title: Porting astronomical data reduction labs to Python Supervisor: Sheila McBreen Description: Third year Physics with Astronomy and Space Science students currently complete a lab assignment using the data analysis package IRAF. This involves standard CCD calibration and analysis of a number of astrophysical objects observed by the IAC 80 telescope in Teide observatory. Students have recently begun to use Python for general analysis in the undergraduate lab and it is an opportune time to access the suitability of Pyraf for astronomy assignments. The aim of this internship project is to complete the assignments using Pyraf taking on-board input from fellow students, postgraduates and staff in the School of Physics and to provide documentation for future use in the lab. 5