Particle Physics

The elementary constituents of the universe and how they interact is of profound interest in physics. Specifically, the framework of Quantum Field Theory tells us about how the elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics interact. However, many of these interactions are extremely complex, which makes it very difficult to study this theory inside of a particle detector. My research in particle physics began by studying machine learning techniques to classify particles based on the signature that they leave inside of the GlueX detector at Jefferson Laboratory. The corresponding paper for this research can be found here.

This work has inspired me to further study the elementary interactions that govern our universe and research the theories that expand upon the standard model to include gravity. Such a theory of quantum gravity is string theory. My research right now includes developing a code that samples points on Calabi-Yau manifolds, thus allowing for a numerical determination of the metric (i.e., a mathematical notion of distance) on these manifolds. You can find the code that I am developing on my github here. In the future, I aim to develop observables in string theory that can be tested with my research studying galaxy clusters.