Whenever I meet people, they are curious to learn how I began doing what I do. Here are some of the most common questions I encounter.
How did you become an astrophysicist?
As a freshman at the University of Hawaii, I learned a curious statement about the universe in my introductory astronomy class. "We can only see 4% of the universe." My professor encouraged me to pursuing a physics degree to learn more about what this means. That is where the journey began and it continues til this day.
How did you end up working on the Holometer?
This is an interesting questions because I am a graduate student at Vanderbilt University (in Nashville) yet I live in Chicago. I am a member of the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at University of Chicago and work on the Holometer at Fermilab in Batavia, IL. How did that happen?
As I transitioned from my masters at Fisk University into the PhD program at Vanderbilt University (Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge Program), I began discussing projects with with my advisor, Andreas Berlind. We discussed 1) building fake universes on a giant supercomputer for a project called BOSS to study cosmological signatures 2) possibly starting a collaboration with scientists in Hawaii on the Gemini telescope 3) working on an experimental physics project trying to measure signatures of a holographic universe.
The last one sounded the most intriguing, so I flew up to Chicago to meet the people I would work with. I fell in love with the idea of building physics experiments. I really enjoyed everyone that I met and decided to become a member of the team. I began working in the summer 2011 and went back and forth for a couple semesters. Now I live in Chicago full-time and love every minute of it!
The last one sounded the most intriguing, so I flew up to Chicago to meet the people I would work with. I fell in love with the idea of building physics experiments. I really enjoyed everyone that I met and decided to become a member of the team. I began working in the summer 2011 and went back and forth for a couple semesters. Now I live in Chicago full-time and love every minute of it!
What is your research project? What are you trying to do?
What I do :
I work on an experiment called the Holometer : holometer.fnal.gov
The Big Question :
An unresolved problem exists between the foundations of physics :
general relativity and quantum mechanics. General relativity refers to
our description of space and time while quantum mechanics refers to our
description of matter. The problem is that both theories are well
supported by accurate experiments, and yet they are still inconsistent
with each other. One unsolved mystery is whether or not space is made up
of discrete quanta (like matter) or if it is entirely continuous. This
problem remains difficult to solve because we have no experimental
evidence to drive theories forward. However, a measurable prediction of
the inaccuracy of position measurements might be one way to fix this
problem. Position noise could arise from the discrete quanta of
space-time and may be measurable in the laboratory.
What we do :
In our experiment, known as the Holometer, we are testing whether the
proposed position noise is detectable by pushing the boundaries of
technology and creating the world's most precise ruler. The Holometer
can measure the position of an object 100 times more accurately than
currently available instruments, which is a hundred thousand times
smaller than the radius of an electron. We have built a pair of 40 meter
Michelson Interferometers, instruments that use the interference
pattern of overlapping light beams to the measure position of an object
and achieve this sensitivity.
What I do :
My PhD research investigates whether the position noise we measure using the Holometer represents signature evidence of this new idea of space-time. In my work, I perform essential experiments that will characterize our instruments and identify sources of background noise. My research also includes developing detector technology to meet the experiment demands. The Holometer science data runs have just begun as of October 2014. If our work manages to uncover this new position noise from space-time, it could have profound implications for how we view physics.
