Experimental Designs

I have 8+ years experience in designing, constructing, and implementing high resolution experimental systems spanning from the microwave to the visible spectral ranges. Below are a brief description of some of experiments I’ve designed and the innovations I’ve made in the process.

Time-domain terahertz spectrometer

Designed, constructed, and implemented a time-domain terahertz spectrometer based on the photo-conductive Auston switch method of generating and detecting broadband terahertz pulses.

The experimental design included a novel configuration of the off-axis parabolic mirrors used to direct and focus terahertz light in which the principle aberration from one parabolic mirror is compensated for by the orientation of the following parabolic mirror. The result is an ideally complete cancellation of the principle coma aberration and vastly improved imaging capabilities. With this new design, I found a nearly 40% reduction in the achieved terahertz focal spot size when compared to the conventional 8f geometry. I summarized these finding in The Journal Of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves which can be read about here.

He-3 integrated Microwave cavity resonator experiment

Designed, constructed, and implemented a He-3 integrated microwave cavity resonator experiment capable of reaching a base temperature of 350 mK. Cavity was designed and constructed from superconducting NbTi which when optimized reached signal-to-noise ratios as high as 10,000,000 : 1. Experiment was extensively used to search for unconventional forms of superconductivity including odd-parity and topological superconductivity.

This experiment included a novel method of breaking mode degeneracies by inserting dielectric spacers between the ends and body of the superconductivity cavity.

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