Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Day 29

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Today we had our practice presentations in the auditorium with Joe and Matt. Everyone's presentations went pretty well although a few were too long (including mine which was about 1.5 min over the time limit). I think the amount of information and number of slides is reasonable but I need to practice a few more times today and tomorrow to help cut down on the time for my explanations of each slide. Final versions of our presentations are due tomorrow at the end of the day so I'll ask Dr. Qiao to look at my edited version one more time before submitting the final copy to Joe.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Day 28

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Dr. Qiao came to the lab this afternoon to review our presentations for later this week and give is suggestions for what needed to be edited to be made clearer or more concise. Dr. Qiao also helped me to change the order of the presentation slightly to make it more cohesive. We didn't have time to actually practice presenting them to Dr. Qiao which we will still need to do before Thursday but our practice tomorrow should help to improve the presentation as well once we get feedback from the other interns and from Joe.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Day 27

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This morning, Dr. Qiao helped Ronny and I prepare for our mini presentation for the Dean of the college of science. We each prepared three slides and practiced presenting to Dr. Qiao. Hopefully this practice will help to improve our presentations next week too.

When the Dean arrived at the lab Dr. Qiao showed her the femtosecond laser system which was new since the last time she visited. Then Lauren, Ronny, Cayla, and I talked to the Dean and answered a few questions about the work each of us is doing while we presented our slides. The Dean seemed to be impressed by the research the lab is doing and was interested to see how Ronny and I had been able to learn from and contribute to the ongoing work here.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Day 26

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Today I worked on creating a short presentation at the request of Dr. Qiao that will be presented to the Dr. Maggelakis, the Dean of the College of Science, who will be visiting our lab tomorrow. Everyone working in the lab will be making a giving a short presentation on their current project and what they have learned in the lab.

I also continued working with the delay box for a short time and realized that the minimum delay time between the two pulses was about 5 nanoseconds; the manual says that the range starts at 0 and has a resolution of 5 picoseconds so I'm not sure why it won't go below 5 nanoseconds.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Day 25

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I was able to figure out how to operate the delay box that we want to use to trigger the CCD camera and laser despite a not very helpful manual. I set the pulse to trigger two pulses through two separate output cables that were 50 nanoseconds apart and each lasted for 5 nanoseconds. This will be used to trigger the camera after a very short delay so that the laser has time to reach sample before the camera begins its exposure. The delay box settings were tested used an oscilloscope which displays electrical input signals. Ronny is working now to find a way to connect the delay box to the camera because they do not use the same type of cable.

Delay box (right) connected to oscilloscope (left)

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Day 24

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I think the program I am working on is calculating the complex beam parameter (q) correctly now that I changed it to use the input beam waist location in the calculation of the radius of curvature rather than calculating that position based on the waist size and current size; I'm not sure why the second way doesn't work though, it seems like it should give the same answer either way.

The program calculates the q value and then uses q in a 1x2 matrix which is multiplied by the matrices for the components of the optical system (one matrix for each lens and one for each distance of free space between, before, or after lenses) which gives a new complex parameter. The same process can also be done to the two values (height and angle) that are used to calculate the radius of curvature. By knowing the radius of curvature before and after the transformation the beam radius and therefore intensity (because power is conserved) can be calculated at the second point as well because radius and radius of curvature are the only two variables used to calculate q (several constants are used as well). MATLAB is used for this process because instead of just calculating the new beam characteristics at the end point, it can run through a loop and find the beam characteristics at every point between two desired distances and display them as a data table or a graph.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Day 23

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Today I worked on revising my outline and creating my presentation for a large part of the day so there isn't much exciting news to report. I worked on the MATLAB program later and I think the matrix transformation is not giving me the correct result (assuming my calculation on paper is correct) but I'm not sure what the problem is yet.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Day 22

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Today was the research symposium for REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students who have been working on a research project at RIT over the summer. I attended 3 of the talks about research in astronomy and cosmology. One of the presentations was about the technical aspects of creating a cryogenically cooled imaging system for use in a telescope. Two of the presentations referred to analysis of large amounts of data from the COSMOS database which is a sky survey created by Caltech that I had not heard of previously. The survey records data of over 2 million galaxies in a small 2 square degree patch of the sky. The analysis of data in these two talks were very interesting. One focused on the star formation rate in galaxies and how it changed over the timespan of the universe and the other talked about the galaxy merger rate of large galaxies.

I think I'm close to finishing the portion of my MATLAB program that I've been working on this week as I calculated an ABCD matrix transform of a beam but I still need to check part of it by hand to make sure it is giving the correct result.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Day 21

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This morning Ronny and I met with Dr. Qiao after she arrived back from China yesterday. She wanted to check in on our progress and gave us some helpful tips on improvement of our outlines and presentations.

After meeting I continued to work on my MATLAB code for the rest of the day as I still haven't completed the function for transforming a Gaussian beam after in passes through an optical element. I first wanted to attempt to calculate an ABCD matrix transformation on paper to make sure I understood it completely (which I didn't at first) before trying to code a function to do the same thing.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Day 20

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Today was Wednesday meaning there was a tech talk at noon today (the last one for the summer), which I attended. The talk was about a software system called DIRSIG that is able to simulate hyperspectral image data in many different regions of light to test imaging systems before they are deployed for use in remote sensing. The software is able to accurately simulate a variety of different scenes including cars, buildings, and geographical features in order to test the capabilities of systems for use on high altitude planes and satellites.

Later today I also assisted in Titus' research by acting as a test subject for him. I wore a set of eye-tracking glasses that recorded my eye movements and gaze position as I performed several activities. I first had to catch a tennis ball repeatedly that was bounced off the floor. I then had to walk around the second floor of the Carlson building and then be pushed on a cart in the same path around the second floor. Next we went to a different building at RIT to record my eye movements again as I took a path around the building (this time unguided) and then was pushed on a cart around the building. I won't say why each of these tests was necessary because it could bias anyone else who participates in the experiment to know the purpose and what Titus was looking for in the data beforehand. It was pretty fun to help with the experiment and hopefully I gave Titus some useful data for his project.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Day 19

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I spent today trying to figure out why my program to model the Gaussian beam is showing diffraction even though I removed the aperture that it was originally programmed to propagate through. I didn't fully fix the problem but I did eventually identify one error (I forgot to square one of the variables in a function I was calling) that was causing the calculated radius to be incorrect.

Monday, July 31, 2017

Day 18

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Dr. Qiao asked Ronny and I to start working on our presentations so that we have plenty of time to edit and refine them before August 17th. I spent a lot of time today working on that; it took a while to insert all of the equations I've been using as equations in PowerPoint.

Other than I working on my presentation I confirmed the calculations of my 3D Gaussian program in MATLAB with the results of the same calculation in 2 dimensions just to check that the program was working correctly. Below is an image of the phase of the beam in 3 dimensions that turned out to have a particularly interesting diffraction structure.