This award supports the renewal of the Research Experience for Undergraduates site at the College of William and Mary. The REU program is a ten-week program of physics research for junior-level undergraduates, selected on the basis of grades and letters of recommendation. About 30 members of the Physics and Applied Science Departments at William and Mary, as well as several distinguished scientists at Jefferson Lab and NASA-LaRC have agreed to serve as mentors. This program also involves two teachers in the neutrino physics program at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Fields represented by the potential mentors are: laser physics including work with the JLab FEL, laser atom interactions, condensed matter physics studied with lasers, NMR, and a variety of other techniques, neutrino physics, nuclear and particle physics, THz spectroscopy, polymer physics, surface physics, ultra-sonics, NDE, BEC on a chip, ultra-short laser pulses, plasma physics, non-linear dynamics, quantum computing, information and optics, bio-informatics, and astrophysics/cosmology. Research projects in all these fields have been represented in the past in William and Mary's Physics REU Program, which has run continuously since 1987. The RET program, which has been in operation since 2005, brings teachers into neutrino research at one of the foremost facilities in the world. This award is co-funded by the Division of Physics and by the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.
Physics Research Experiences for Undergraduates and Research Experiences for Teachers at the College of William and Mary Summers of 2008, 2009, and 2010 The Physics and Applied Science Departments at the College of William and Mary have hosted an research experiences for undergraduates (REU) site and have coordinated a research experiences for teachers (RET) program. REU From about 600 applications we offered admission to about 90 students from other universities. Of these 30 entered the program and were supported by this grant. We were able to admit another 23 from William and Mary who were supported either by NSF supplements, or other funds. Upon entering the program, the students were presented with a wide variety of projects from which to choose. There are 28 physics faculty, 8 applied science faculty, some researchers at NASA Langley Research Center, and some at Jefferson Lab who have offered projects. There have been 26 separate selected mentors over the three summers. William and Mary has a strong atomic physics representation. Projects in this field have studied the manipulation of atomic systems with laser light, the generation of so called dark states, and the development of instrumentation for atomic cooling to ultra-cold temperatures. (15 projects). Perhaps surprisingly there have been several theoretical projects in cosmology and elementary particle physics. (5 projects) For example one topic was: "Testing the Universality of a Holographic Dual to QCD". Another was: "Using Cosmological Data to Constrain the Dark Energy Equation of State". The mentors led the students through the introduction to these problems to the point that the students could make real contributions. In the first of these examples the project led to a publication. William and Mary is close to Jefferson Lab, so as might be expected, 10 projects involved nuclear and particle experimental or theoretical physics. An example: "Double Asymmetries in Inclusive Electron- Proton Scattering", involved the analysis of data from Jefferson lab. It introduced the student to the software programs and the physics related to this study. In condensed matter physics there were 12 projects. An example: "Magneto-optical imaging of type II superconductors". The high energy program at William and Mary is concentrated around neutrino physics. There were 3 projects. These projects have allowed the travel of the students to Fermilab and to the Soudan underground lab in Minnesota. There were 7 projects with topics ranging widely over physics and other fields. For example in one the use of quantum dots as diagnostic tool for the study of the metabolism in small lab animals was studied. In another the means to detect stress in neo-natal infants by observing and characterizing heart and respiration rates. We offered seminars and colloquia on a range of physics topics; tours of Jefferson Lab and NASA Langley Research Center; and we also offered a machine shop course. We required that they write an abstract and give a 10 minute talk, much like at an APS Meeting. They gave a longer talk at the end of the session and wrote a paper on their projects. Several of these papers have formed parts of publications. From questionnaires at the end of the 2010 session all indicated an intent to go on to graduate school. RET For the RET program science teachers, 5 over 3 years, worked on the MINOS long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. MINOS studies neutrino oscillations using a neutrino beam generated at Fermilab near Chicago and directed to the MINOS detector at the Soudan Underground Laboratory (SUL). SUL is a half mile underground in the historic Soudan Mine in Minnesota.The RET program was seven weeks long. The teachers joined the Summer Teacher Residency (STR) program at the SUL, working with Prof. Nelson on operating the MINOS detector and examining collected data. After an orientation on the MINOS research program, the teachers spent between 5 and 10 weeks in the STR program in Minnesota. Participants also contributed to the SUL’s outreach mission by guiding public tours of the facility and by preparing course materials on neutrino physics appropriate to middle or high school students remote to the SUL site. The goals of this outreach program are to inform people about the experiments currently being conducted in SUL, and provide the general public with an understanding of the work and goals of the scientists working in the Laboratory. Most of the teachers visited the Fermilab site to see the source of the MINOS neutrino beam, to visit the Lederman Science Center, and to meet with the Fermilab science docents. One of the teachers worked at William and Mary on the development, assembly and testing of detec- tor elements for the MINERνA neutrino scattering experiment, which were deployed at Fermilab and are currently being used. In the final two weeks they augmented introductory PowerPoint documentation for future RET partici- pants, wrote up of their MINOS data analysis results, and completed course materials for the SUL outreach website.
