Sunday, July 23, 2023
By:
Hi all!
Overall my week was rather short, but the weekend was packed with events.
Starting with work related progress: After my work with the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian and the lectures with Guiseppe on 2D Feynman Diagrams, I was able to produce an expression that would help in our simulation of a 2 Quantum Simulation. In previous weeks, I’ve produced a theoretical spectra of the Upper and Lower Polariton (separately). It was now time to produce the same spectra but with both polaritons shown. There are various parameters that are sensitive to this, so it is important that the energies and frequencies stay consistent and, of course, theoretically accurate. After a few days of trial and error, I produced a spectra with many, many peaks which set me on the correct course. My simulation showed many peaks initially because the code was not accounting for “illegal” particle jumps. Basically, a particle cannot jump from the ground state to the second excited state, or vice versa. There needs to be some excitation or de-excitation occurring to make this happen. After methods of filtering these jumps and making them physically possible, a 2 quantum spectra was produced.
With this spectra, I also made an animation showing how the energy levels change with respect to detuning. Though short, we can use the animation to compare with our experimental results. Our experimental results also contain what is known as the Biexciton (we think). So, the next step is to add the biexciton into the simulation, and create an animation for that.
On Monday, I went with a couple of the interns to Dupont Circle to an open mic night at an italian restaurant. The majority of the interns who went got up to sing and I’m so proud of each of them! The talent in this intern cohort is insane. On Tuesday I had a meeting with the NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory. This was my first time meeting with the group and I am very excited to see the HWO progress. Later that night, Brynn and Gizem embarked on the journey to teach me how to use chopsticks. I say it went well.
On Friday, my boyfriend Randy flew in from Arizona. I showed him around the GWU Campus and showed him a couple of my favorite spots in DC like tonic and Lincoln at Sunset. He’s an Astrophysicist himself, so of course, we went to visit Einstein.
His birthday was the next day, so we started our celebration at Mission Dupont for Bottomless Brunch. Afterward we stopped in Krispy Kreme to grab some donut holes. It was a warmer weekend, so we returned to Amsterdam and watched a couple movies to get out of the heat.
On Sunday, I took him to the Dupont Farmers Market and we grabbed a little bit of breakfast/lunch. We then ventured to the Smithsonians and went to the American History Museum and scooted around until we found ourselves at The White House. Randy has been to DC previously, but it was amazing to show him the ins and outs that I’ve learned these past two years. We ended our night seeing Oppenheimer in IMAX. All I can say is – I wanted to see it again right after it ended.
That was my eventful week, tune in to next week!
Janessa Slone