Projects
Here are some of the things I've been working on. If you are also interested in any of these things, please reach out! I am always looking for new planets to recreate in the lab, or new measurements to improve your models and observations.
Haze hydrolysis
Advisor: Sarah Hörst
Hazes are photochemically-produced solids suspended in a planet's atmosphere, comprised of complex organic molecules. They seem to be common in atmospheres, appearing on Saturn's moon Titan and even many exoplanets. We care about hazes since they affect the thermal structure, atmospheric chemistry, and surface processes of a planet. The PHAZER Laboratory at JHU can simulate hazes across a range of planetary environments, and these laboratory analogs can be studied for use in models and observations. I am investigating the effects of water on these haze analogs using mass spectrometry for composition analyses and infrared spectroscopy to obtain optical constants. The compositional results of this study will have implications for prebiotic chemistry, and optical constants will enable interpretation of atmospheric observations.
Icy grain entrapment
Advisor: Karin Öberg
The chemical composition of planets depends largely on the volatile inventory available during formation in the protoplanetary disk. Volatiles are distributed amongst the gas and solid phases depending on their snowline, or distance from the star at which a molecule freezes. This model, while a good first-order approximation, does not account for processes like ice microphysics. Hyper-volatile molecules like CO and N2 can be trapped inside of less volatile ice matrices like CO2 and H2O, causing anomalous volatile inventories across the disk. I used laboratory experiments to investigate this process, called entrapment, across ice thicknesses relevant to the interstellar medium and disks. I found that ices in the two thickness regimes entrap hyper-volatiles at approximately the same rate, enabling modelers to use a simple formula for entrapment efficiency.
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This project made me fall in love with laboratory work! Read the paper here :)
entrappd CO
surface desorption
H2O desorption
17th floor office views
Phosphine linelist
Advisor: Clara Sousa-Silva
Phosphine (PH3) is the simplest phosphorous-bearing gas, though it has a complex relationship to life on Earth and beyond. On Earth, PH3 is toxic to humans but is an abundant byproduct of anaerobic life. As such, the molecule could be an intriguing biosignature if detected on another planet. I helped to develop an updated high-temperature linelist for phosphine, extracting quantum numbers and rotational-vibrational energy levels from the literature and calibrating them using the MARVEL spectroscopic network software.
CERN CMS experiment
Advisor: Louise Skinnari
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN is one of the four detectors along the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest particle accelerator in the world. It is designed to measure the momenta and energies of particles produced when photons traveling near the speed of light collide, identifying new particles and behaviors. My small role in this massive collaboration included upgrading the particle identification algorithm in the CMS L1 Track Trigger layer using Monte Carlo simulations of proton-muon collisions. This work was done during the second long shutdown in preparation for the High-Luminosity LHC.
* not my photo, COVID times :( someday I will see her in person
* my actual view for most of this internship