My Undergrad Research Experience …

UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Senior Honors Thesis in High Energy Theory

Dates Employed : Jun 2021 – May 2022

This is a study on anomaly mediated Supersymmetry breaking (AMSB) in QCD-like theories. Currently I am using two-loop renormalization group equations and Seiberg duality to study the flow of coupling constants and the running of squark & gaugino masses near Infrared Banks-Zaks fixed points. In November 2021, we published some results on chiral symmetry breaking at the edges of the SU(Nc) conformal window (download link from arXiv). AMSB effects are shown to be relevant for the conformal window, which deflects the RGE flow away from the superconformal dynamics. We show that the ground state appears with a finite meson expectation value. After integrating out the dual quarks, the low energy pure SYM develops a gaugino condensate. Interpolating between the edges of the conformal window, we predict that non-supersymmetric QCD breaks chiral symmetry up to Nf <= 3Nc - 1. Next we wish to investigate whether there is a phase transition as the size of the AMSB parameter is increased from much below the dynamical scale to much above it. 

Undergraduate Research Apprentice in the ATLAS Higgs Plus X research group

Dates Employed : Sep 2020 – Apr 2021

Led by Professor Haichen Wang, I was a part of the group that is working on the generation of the very first "picture" of the Higgs boson, using real collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment during the Run-2 of the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson produced at the LHC can decay to a pair of photons, which are well measured experimentally. During the LHC Run-2, a period from 2015 to 2018, approximately 16,000 Higgs bosons were produced and decayed to ultra-high energy photon pairs. Analysis of these Higgs-boson-to-photons decays would facilitate creation of the image. I studied the trends of Missing Transverse Energy (MET) and Transverse Momentum scalar sum (HT) in the diphoton decay channel of the Higgs boson, and assisted in parts of an ATLAS Internal note by computing the Monte Carlo resonant backgrounds and yields for various Higgs production processes.

Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Charged Lepton Flavor Group

Dates Employed : Oct 2019 – May 2022

I am a research assistnat under Professor Yury Kolomensky in LBNL's charged lepton Flavor Group that comprises active members of the Mu2e experiment, which will search for charged lepton flavor violation in the capture of muons on Aluminum nuclei (neutrinoless muon beta decay).

Mentored by Dr. Richard Bonventre, I contributed to the enhancement of the CLFV electron signal reconstruction in the straw tracker (Geant4 simulations) by improving the rejection of the highly ionizing straw hits produced by protons from muon capture. The unique identification of the presence of electrons and protons in the Straw detector is fundamental to the functioning of Mu2e, and this project was funded by the Berkeley Physics Undergraduate Research Scholarship (BPURS) program. The objective was met by designing a TMVA-based artificial neural network algorithm (MLP) using various weighted combinations of the ADC waveform shape, Time over Threshold and channel-wise calibration information. These combinations yielded classification models that differ in their speeds of execution and degrees of freedom. For the most complex model, proton rejection efficiency improved from 84.5% to 98% & signal acceptance also went up from 94.5% to 97% (tested on data from simulations), when compared to the older deposit energy cuts in the detector's particle identification system. This work was presented at the APS DPF (download slides) and PANIC 2021 (download link, also see below) conferences.

Currently I am analyzing cosmic data from the Vertical Slice Test (VST) prototype by developing an algorithm to distinguish particle showers from single minimum ionizing particles (MIP). If MIP signals and response distributions like ToT, peak-minus-pedestal of ADC waveforms, etc. are in agreement with our expectations from the simulation, then we will compare predictions from the aforementioned TMVA classification models to the observed signal and background. In case of discrepancies, we will adjust the calibration parameters in the simulator until better agreement is achieved. We also plan to reconstruct cosmic ray tracks in VST data. 

Undergraduate Research Assistant in the DUNE/Daya Bay Neutrino Group

Dates Employed : Nov 2019 – Aug 2021

As a Lawrence Berkeley Lab Affiliate under Professor Kam-Biu Luk and Emeritus Professor Herbert Steiner, I initially assisted in testing the noise level and calibrating prototype detector electronics like the Hamamatsu Silicon Photo Multipliers (which detected light pulses from particle interactions, primarily cosmic rays, within a cryogenic high-purity liquid argon test system) and CAEN 32-channel SiPM readout front-end boards to demonstrate their suitability for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) near-detector system that studies Neutrino oscillations. DAQs, LEDs, dark boxes, oscilloscopes and pulse generators were used for this purpose.

I then analyzed those Single pion production datasets from the Argonne and Brookhaven Bubble Chamber neutrino-deuterium scattering experiments that are not the commonly used functions of true neutrino energy and four-momentum transfer. The objective of this work was ro help address the systematic uncertainties encountered at the T2K and DUNE neutrino oscillation experiments. GENIE, NUWRO and NEUT were used to generate scattering events, and NUISANCE was applied to make comparisons of all these models to all the measurements and theoretical predictions that ANL and BNL published in the 1980s. The impact of variable parameters were checked for NEUT using event re-weighting, following which we used NUISANCE to obtain the set of best fit parameter values and uncertainties that can coherently fit to a large number of datasets. I uncovered certain disagreements between four-momentum and previously unexplored invariant mass datasets, and discussed the findings at the Neutrinos en Columbia 2021 conference (download slides), at a T2K Collaboration Meeting and in a first-author T2K technical report (download pdf). The project was funded by the Berkeley Physics Undergraduate Research Scholarship (BPURS) program. I also presented an academic poster on my work (download link, also see below), to Professors and students in the Physics department of UC Berkeley.

Freshman research in Condensed Matter Physics, Undergraduate Lab @ Berkeley

Dates Employed : Aug 2018 – May 2019

This was a student-led project whose proposal was approved by the Physics department. In a group of four, we identified and studied different kinds of stacking in self-exfoliated few-layer Graphene by analyzing the red-shifted G mode peak of Raman spectrums obtained by back-scattering laser radiation. We presented a poster (download link) at UC Berkeley’s Freshman Physics symposium.

Graduate Student Instructor at UC Berkeley

Dates Employed : Aug 2022 - Present

The course (Physics 8A) presents an introduction to forces, kinetics, equilibria, fluids, waves, and heat, and is particularly useful preparation for upper division study in biology and architecture.

Responsibilities : Leading 8 hours of discussion and lab sections every week; promoting a collaborative environment and actively interacting with 25 students in each section; designing weekly worksheets; hosting office hours; forming a liaison between the Professors and the students; developing the rubric, previewing, proctoring & grading exams of 325 students.

Other teaching experiences as a paid employee :
I have been the Group Tutor for a course on Analytic Mechanics and Reader (i.e. grader) for a course on Computational Techniques in Physics.

Teaching a seminar course

Dates Employed : Aug 2021 - May 2022

Responsibilities : Writing a proposal, developing the syllabus, planning the course calender, creating the weekly set of slides, background study of contemporary research in each subfield of Physics, inviting guest lecturers, designing & grading the weekly assignments, providing feedback.

I have designed and been the instructor of a weekly Decal course “A Prelude to Physics, Berkeley and Beyond”, which has been funded (via stipend) and acknowledged by the Berkeley Discovery Program as a useful resource for giving a head start to underclassmen who are interested in pursuing Physics. The Physics Department is planning on continuing this as a regular course in the upcoming semesters by passing on the course materials to rising seniors who are interested in taking up the role of the instructor.

This course was designed to acclimate students to UC Berkeley’s physics department and provide an enriching survey of the various subfields that coexist in physics. First it went over the plethora of physics courses that the university has to offer, including the major requirements, electives and selected graduate courses, along with recommended chronologies for taking these courses. Next, it dived into the realms of each subfield of physics, focusing separately on theory and experiment, by going over some of the intriguing contemporary research problems and hearing short anecdotes from experienced guest lecturers. The covered subfields were Astrophysics, Particle Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, AMO Physics, Plasma Physics, Mathematical Physics and Biophysics. Relevant research opportunities and positions with professor-led groups at UC Berkeley and LBNL were discussed. The class culminated in a movie that peeks into the life of one of the greatest physicists ever - Stephen Hawking!