Senior Thesis Presentations - Burrola, Emmons, Padilla, Rollin

Time: 2 PM, Friday, May 4th, 2007

Place: P-148 (refreshments will be served at 1:45 PM in P146A)

Hyperons and Neutron Star Matter
Parker Burrola
The purpose of this project is to numerically compute models for the Equations of State of neutron star matter. We examined solutions corresponding to symmetric nucleon matter and also for asymmetric nucleon matter. We will also discuss the future aspects and goals of this project.

One Dimensional Ultrafast Phase Only Pulse Shaping
Daniel J. Emmons II
We shape pulses in time by adjusting the phase of the different frequency components of ultrafast pulses. A one dimensional liquid crystal spatial light modulator was used to apply the phase.

Secular Behavior of Nuclear Energy Density
Derek Padilla
A common model used in the secular behavior of spherical shell-model configuration energy densities is a Gaussian curve. This cannot accommodate asymmetries in the distribution, which are commonly encountered in realistic energy densities. Using moment methods, we examine the use of an exponential with a polynomial argument (EPA) as a more flexible alternative to generate an analytic fit to these energy distributions. The target moments are generated from configuration energy densities of the many-body Hamiltonian. Our results show that the EPA is easily parametrized to match the target moments.

Investigation of Helium using Configuration Interaction
Kyle Rollin
Configuration Interaction (CI), using an orthogonal Laguerre basis, is used to investigate helium atom excited states. The convergence of the energy and lowest-order relativistic correction expectation values with respect to N (The number of basis functions included in the calculation) are examined. Extrapolations to the limit of infinite number of basis functions using power series yields estimates consistent with the variational principle.

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Or via the digital thesis archive.