Meet an Undergraduate Researcher!
I worked over two summers to build a magneto-optical trap (MOT)
that will soon become part of an undergraduate teaching lab at the university.
An MOT uses laser beams and a magnetic field 
to trap a cloud of
atoms 
in the center of a vacuum chamber while sapping their kinetic energy.
Eventually, the atoms reach temperatures of several hundred micro-Kelvin above
absolute zero: thousands of times colder than outer space. This process is the
first step in creating clouds of ultra-cold atoms, called Bose-Einstein
condensates, whose quantum mechanical properties are a very active field of
research.
I have presented work relating to this project at the APS Frontiers in Optics Undergraduate Session, the Rochester Symposium for Physics Students, and the University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Expo. I plan to write a senior thesis describing the project.
