Andy’s Los Alamos Blog

Sorry about the recent lack of posts. The student symposium was yesterday(ish), Thursday, and I’ve been pretty busy lately with that. As I said, I presented a talk there, “Simulation and Characterization of a Dark Matter Detector,” and it seems to have been pretty well-received. I’m looking forward to presenting it elsewhere (i.e. Lehigh), just as soon as I can get that pesky declassification review. My abstract should be coming along, too, and I’ll post that here as soon as I can. I won’t be able to put up my paper until a while after I leave; the deadline isn’t until 8/10, and it still has to be reviewed after that. Well, it should be a good read, anyway.

The Symposium was a pretty good time. Following a light (and free!) breakfast, we browsed student-created posters, and saw some pretty awesome stuff. Then, following a light (and free!) lunch, student talks began. I was able to see a few of my fellow LASS-ers speak, and it was very impressive. Both through posters and talks, it was great to learn about what my friends have been doing all summer in a bit more detail. People had some really awesome projects even, admittedly, in T division.

So, today I continued my resistor torture, probing what it will take to destroy these things, and my subject is holding strong. If it’s going to give up, it had better do so soon, because I have to go home. Also, this afternoon, I started running a few more simulations in RAT that will test a few more parameters of the dark matter detector, and give me a few more interesting things to talk about in my paper. More as the story unfolds.

Regarding the last post, Kate asked about how the resistive heating thing is going to work if the PMT is in a vacuum (the whole point of which is to stop heat flow). I too was puzzled by this, but I asked, and it turns out the setup isn’t at all complete yet. The PMT will go in an inner chamber, through which we flow cold gas (cooled by the cold head), and the vacuum between this inner chamber and the outer chamber wall will keep the whole apparatus from becoming an ice cube, as always. So, what’s really happening is that the resistor is indirectly controlling the temperature of the gas, which is controlling the temperature of the PMT. In related news, the new power supply I ordered came today, causing much new-gadget elation.

After work, I met up with other LASS people, had Thai for dinner, hung out at Ashley Pond for a surprisingly good outdoor concert, and then went to see the Bourne Ultimatum, which was a pretty rockin movie. It was no Transformers, but a good time indeed.

I am, as usual, not sure what the weekend has in store, but I’m hoping to get outside and enjoy New Mexico and some LASS bonding for my (sniffle) last weekend here.