Al(
O,O)
experiment with Stephen Padalino from SUNY Geneseo as my advisor. I performed
diagnostic tests on the accelerator and wrote a Monte Carlo simulation
program.
Stephen P. Weppner: Research Interests
[1] Sensitivities of the Proton-Nucleus
Scattering Observables of 6He and 8He at Intermediate Energies
[2] Off Shell Structures
of Nucleon-Nucleon t-matrices and their Influence on Nucleon-Nucleus Observables
[3] Energy Dependence
of the NN t-matrix in the Optical Potential for Elastic Nucleon-Nucleus
Scattering
[4] Full-Folding Optical
Potentials for Elastic Nucleon-Nucleus Scattering Based on Realistic Densities
[5] Consistent treatment
of Propagator Modifications in Elastic Nucleon-Nucleus Scattering with
the Spectator Expansion
[6] Total Cross Sections
for Neutron Scattering Influence on Nucleon-Nucleus Observables
[7] Application of Multiple
Scattering Theory to Lower Energy Elastic Nucleon-Nucleus Reactions
Recent antisymmetry paper in
postscript format (draft)
As an undergraduate student I worked on a 2 MV Van de Graaff Accelerator
laboratory in Geneseo, New York. Here I became acquainted with detectors,
vacuum systems, mass spectrometry, and electronics. I also wrote graphical
software for use in this laboratory to help with data reduction. During
the summer of 1990 I went to Florida State to participate in an Al(O,O)
experiment with Stephen Padalino from SUNY Geneseo as my advisor. I performed
diagnostic tests on the accelerator and wrote a Monte Carlo simulation
program.
Exotic Nuclei I am now interested in studying
reactions which involve nuclei far from the nuclear drip line. This field
has been been spurred by experiments at Michigan State University and RIKEN
in Japan among others. The theoretical approach used in my research makes
an exemplary study of these neutron rich `halo' nuclei. This work began
in the spring of 1998 at Eckerd with an independent study. A successful
National Science Foundation grant supported this work during the summer
of 1998 (PHY-9804307) with myself as the principle investigator. Ofir Garcia,
an undergraduate at Eckerd College, was supported to help with this research.
Here are a few shots of the exotic nucleus Helium 6 created using AVS software.
Another area of interest is in strong inelastic reactions in the intermediate
energy range. Our work so far has only tested the elastic regions of the
theory, but can be extended to inelastic regions. Also, our optical potential
can be applied to (e,e'p) reactions. Experiments of
this nature will be carried out at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility. These experiments will test the limits of our scattering theory.
A different area of my research lies in physics education, specifically the use of computers on the WWW as educational tools. I have had the opportunity to attend many conferences where computers and physics education are discussed. There have been many 'interactive' problem sets developed for the WWW pages by physics-education departments which I have used with success in teaching. I am also involved at Eckerd in a project, as I teach introductory calculus based physics which is run by a colleague, which examines various interactive teaching methods using the standard pre and post test scores as guides.
Research with Undergraduate Students: Although I was trained in graduate school as a theorist, I am a strong supporter of simulations to understand physics. Here my experimental equipment has become a workstation or personal computer. As a researcher I strengthen both the physics and computational resources of an institution.
My research involves computational many-body nuclear physics. My advisor,
collaborators, and myself have used visualization as a tool in our research.
Undergraduates during my graduate school career have made considerable
contributions in our field. I was their direct superior in teaching them
the software, as well as helping them assimilate the physics behind the
simulations. In the first summer, using Advanced
Visualization Systems as software, the student made professional
animation videos at the Ohio Supercomputer Center which examined energy
dependence in nucleon-nucleon potentials. This software has a graphical
programming environment similar to Labview. A good introduction
to what AVS can do can be found in the Nov/Dec 1996 issue of Computers
in Physics. A summary of my student's work work can be found here
.
In the second year this software was used by a new student to picture second
order differential equations of a sun-planet system. In the third year
this same student, now adept at the software, animated three dimensional
representations of interaction matrices. A sample of this student's work
is at
this location.
These experiences have shown me that it is very possible, rewarding, and
quite motivating to use undergraduate students in computational research
work. The experience the students gained in problem solving technique was
a benefit to them in their class work and their future job placement.