Project description:
There are two aspects to this line of research, one immediate and one longer-term that will revisit work I attended to as a research scientist at MIT. The former is the Coupled Pendula eXperiment (CPX), a device constructed at SUNY Cortland and intended to work as a visual demonstration of complex wave phenomena, like tunneling and nonlinear dispersion relations, that can occur in quantum mechanics and plasma physics. The latter is work that arose out of a series of simulations I ran at MIT using the TORIC code where I was exploring the propagation of ion-cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) waves in the EAST tokamamk located in China.
Coupled Pendula eXperiment (CPX):
This experiment is a student-centered project that will be used to demonstrate the nature of complex wave propagation. The non-uniform nature of the medium means that the local phase and group velocities need not be the same, resulting in wave dispersion. This system will illustrate physical concepts like tunneling, cutoffs, and resonance. These ideas have important connections to quantum mechanics and electromagnetic wave propagation in plasmas. Students have presented this work at the 2019 and 2020 Transformations events. Now that the construction of the experimental device is complete, the original plan was to focus on data collection in the Spring 2020 semester and work toward a publication over the summer. Due to the COVID-19 situation, these plans have been delayed until fall 2020, or as soon as students can resume on-campus research activities. The goal is to write at least one publication on this work with students as coauthors. Students who have participated in this research are: Nathaniel Rose, Karl Hipius, Tyler Edgar, Scott Blankenbaker.
Publications and Reports:
Modeling of EAST ICRF heating
White paper on design of the CPX apparatus
Student Research:
Karl Hipius
Period: Summer 2019-present
Project: Numerical simulation of the Coupled Pendula eXperiment (CPX)
Products:
a. 2020 Transformations presentation
b. Final report from Summer 2019
c. 2019 Transformations presentation
Tyler Edgar
Period: Spring 2020
Project: Experimental measurements of wave phenomena in CPX
Products:
a. Final presentation
Scott Blankenbaker
Period: Spring 2020-present
Project: Experimental measurements of wave phenomena in CPX
Products:
a. Final report