Newton’s third regulation of movement states that for each motion, there may be an equal and reverse response. The fundamental physics of working entails somebody making use of a pressure to the bottom in the other way of their dash.
For senior Olivia Rosenstein, her cross-country participation supplies momentum to her research as an experimental physicist working with 2D supplies, optics, and computational cosmology.
An undergraduate researcher with Professor Richard Fletcher in his Emergent Quantum Matter Group, she helps to construct an erbium-lithium entice for research of many-body physics and quantum simulation. The group’s focus throughout this previous fall was rising the entice’s variety of erbium atoms and lowering the atoms’ temperature whereas getting ready the experiment’s subsequent steps.
To this finish, Rosenstein helped analyze the conduct of the equipment’s magnetic fields, carry out imaging of the atoms, and develop infrared (IR) optics for future levels of laser cooling, which the group is engaged on now.
As she wraps up her time at MIT, she additionally credit her participation on MIT’s Cross Nation crew as the important thing to maintaining together with her tutorial and analysis workload.
“Operating is an integral a part of my life,” she says. “It brings me pleasure and peace, and I’m far much less useful with out it.”
First steps
Rosenstein’s dad and mom — a particular schooling professor and a college director of world teaching programs — inspired her to discover a variety of topics that included math and science. Her early curiosity in STEM included the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Engineering Outreach Society, the place engineering college students go to native elementary colleges.
At Urbana Excessive College, she was a cross-country runner — three-year captain of varsity cross nation and monitor, and a five-time Illinois All-State athlete — whose coach taught superior placement biology. “He did rather a lot to introduce me to the physiological processes that drive cardio adaptation and the way runners prepare,” she recalls.
So, she was leaning towards finding out biology and physiology when she was making use of to high schools. At first, she wasn’t certain she was “sensible sufficient” for MIT.
“I figured everybody at MIT was in all probability manner too harassed, ultracompetitive, and drowning in psets [problem sets], proposals, and analysis initiatives,” she says. However as soon as she had an opportunity to speak to MIT college students, she modified her thoughts.
“MIT youngsters work onerous not as a result of we’re pressured to, however as a result of we’re enthusiastic about fixing that nagging pset downside, or we get so engrossed within the lab that we don’t discover an additional hour has handed. I discovered that folks put quite a lot of time into their residing teams, dance groups, music ensembles, sports activities, activism, and each pursuit in between. As a potential pupil, I bought to speak to some future cross-country teammates too, and it was clear that folks right here actually take pleasure in spending time collectively.”
Drawn to physics
As a primary yr, she was intent on Course 20, however then she discovered herself particularly engaged with class 8.022 (Physics II: Electrical energy and Magnetism), taught by Professor Daniel Harlow.
“I bear in mind there was one time he guided us to a conclusion with utterly logical steps, then proceeded to level out the entire inconsistencies within the idea, and instructed us that sadly we would want relativity and extra superior physics to elucidate it, so we might all have to take these programs and possibly a pair grad lessons after which we might come again happy.
“I believed, ‘Effectively shoot, I assume I’ve to go to physics grad college now.’ It was principally a joke on the time, however he efficiently piqued my curiosity.”
She in contrast the course necessities for bioengineering with physics and located she was extra drawn to the physics lessons. Plus, her time with distant studying additionally pushed her towards extra hands-on actions.
“I spotted I’m happiest when at the least a few of my work entails having one thing in entrance of me.”
The summer season of her rising sophomore yr, she labored in Professor Brian DeMarco’s lab on the College of Illinois in her hometown of Urbana.
“The group was developing a trapped ion quantum computing equipment, and I bought to see how physics ideas could possibly be utilized in follow,” she remembers. “I preferred that experimentalists bought to mix time finding out idea with time constructing within the lab.”
She adopted up with stints in Fletcher’s group, a MISTI internship in France with researcher Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau’s condensed matter lab, and an Undergraduate Analysis Alternative Program challenge engaged on computational cosmology initiatives with Professor Mark Vogelsberger’s group on the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and House Analysis, reviewing the evolution of galaxies and darkish matter halos in self-interacting dark-matter simulations.
By the spring of her junior yr, she was particularly drawn to doing atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) experiments experiments in school 8.14 (Experimental Physics II), the second semester of Junior Lab.
“Experimental AMO is quite a lot of enjoyable since you get to check very attention-grabbing physics — issues like quantum superposition, utilizing gentle to decelerate atoms, and unexplored theoretical results — whereas additionally constructing real-world, tangible techniques,” she says. “Reaching a MOT [magneto-optical trap] is all the time an thrilling section in an experiment since you get to see quantum mechanics at work with your individual eyes, and it’s step one in direction of extra complicated manipulations of the atoms. Present AMO analysis will allow us to take a look at ideas which have by no means been noticed earlier than, including to what we find out about how atoms work together at a elementary stage.”
For the exploratory challenge, Rosenstein and her lab associate, Nicolas Tanaka, selected to construct a MOT for rubidium utilizing JLab’s ColdQuanta MiniMOT package and laser locking via modulation switch spectroscopy. The 2 introduced on the class’s poster session to the division and gained the annual Edward C. Pickering Award for Excellent Authentic Venture.
“We needed the expertise working with optics and electronics, in addition to to create an experimental setup for future pupil use,” she says. “We bought somewhat obsessed — at the least certainly one of us was within the lab nearly each hour it was open for the ultimate two weeks of sophistication. Seeing a cloud of rubidium lastly seem on our IR TV display stuffed us with pleasure, satisfaction, and reduction. I bought actually invested in constructing the MOT, and felt I might see myself engaged on initiatives like this for a very long time sooner or later.”
She added, “I loved the large questions being requested in cosmology, however couldn’t recover from how a lot enjoyable I had within the lab, getting to make use of my fingers. I do know some individuals can’t stand assembling optics, nevertheless it’s sort of like Legos for me, and I’m blissful to spend a day engaged on getting the mirror alignment excellent and ignoring the skin world.”
As a senior, Rosenstein’s objective is to gather expertise in experimental optics and chilly atoms in preparation for PhD work. “I’d like to mix my ardour for giant physics questions and AMO experiments, maybe engaged on elementary physics exams utilizing precision measurement, or exams of many-body physics.”
Concurrently, she’s wrapping up her cosmology analysis, ending a challenge in partnership with Katelin Schutz at McGill College, the place they’re testing a mannequin to interpret 21-centimeter radio wave indicators from the earliest levels of the universe and inform future telescope measurements. Her objective is to see how properly an efficient discipline idea (EFT) mannequin can predict 21cm fields with a restricted quantity of data.
“The EFT we’re utilizing was initially utilized to very large-scale simulations, and we had hoped it could nonetheless be efficient for a set of smaller simulations, however we discovered that this isn’t the case. What we need to know now, then, is how a lot knowledge the simulation must have for the mannequin to work. The analysis requires quite a lot of knowledge evaluation, discovering methods to extract and interpret significant tendencies.”
“It’s much more thrilling figuring out that the consequences we’re seeing are associated to the story of our universe, and the instruments we’re growing could possibly be utilized by astronomers to study much more.”
Operating previous a disaster
Rosenstein credit her participation in cross nation for getting via the pandemic, which delayed setting foot on MIT’s campus till spring 2021.
“The crew did present my essential type of social interplay,” she says. “We had been unhappy we didn’t get to compete, however I ran a time trial that was my quickest mile as much as that time, which was a small win.”
In her sophomore yr, her Thirty eighth-place end at nationals secured her a spot as a Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation All-American in her first collegiate cross-country season. A stress fracture curtailed her working for a bit till inserting twelfth as an NCAA DIII All-American. (The ladies’s crew positioned seventh general, and the lads’s crew gained MIT’s first NCAA nationwide title.) When one other harm sidelined her, she mentored first-year college students as crew captain and stayed engaged nevertheless she might, whereas biking and swimming to take care of coaching. She hopes to maintain working in her life.
“Each working and physics deal rather a lot with delayed gratification: you’re not going to run a private report every single day, and also you’re not going to publish a groundbreaking discovery every single day. Generally you may go months and even years with out feeling such as you’ve made an enormous soar in your progress. If you happen to can’t take that, you gained’t make it as a runner or as a physicist.
“Perhaps that makes it sound like runners and physicists are simply grinding away, enduring fixed struggling in pursuit of some grand objective. However there’s a secret: It isn’t struggling. Operating every single day is a privilege and an opportunity to spend time with associates, getting away from different work. Aligning optics, debugging code, and considering via complicated issues isn’t a day within the lifetime of a masochist, only a satisfying Wednesday afternoon.”
She provides, “Cross nation and physics each require a mix of naive optimism and rigorous skepticism. On the one hand, it’s a must to imagine you’re absolutely able to profitable that race or getting these new outcomes, in any other case, you may not strive in any respect. Then again, it’s a must to be brutally sincere about what it’s going to take as a result of these outcomes gained’t occur in the event you aren’t diligent along with your coaching or in the event you simply assume your experimental setup will work precisely as deliberate. In all, working and physics each encompass minute every day progress that integrates to an enormous outcome, and each infinitesimal phase is value appreciating.”
