After finishing my first year of college I worked in an organic chem lab, and you can read about my feelings and thoughts during and after that period here — Why Chemistry Isn’t For Me. After finishing my second year, I was lucky enough to get an incredible opportunity — summer research at Princeton, and doing physics, no less!
Overall, my last two summers have been so different that I don’t even know where to start describing it.
The most obvious thing — the change of scenery. Even though Caltech is truly the place I call home, living for a while in a completely opposite part of America did me good. Enjoying the beautiful campus, the little town next to it, and nature that’s so different from California’s, plus trips to New York and Philadelphia on weekends, were a breath of fresh air. It’s the kind of little break that’s so necessary after long stretches of school and work.
Another difference — I did not hate my work, and for the most part I actually liked it. Reflecting on it now, I’m only just realizing how lucky I was that
- they decided to take me here for the summer without any experience in physics research
- I ended up in the area of physics that, as I see it now, is the most interesting to me. So what was I doing? I was working in Jeff Thompson’s lab on a project related to Rydberg atoms and Loading into Optical Tweezers. The big picture is that this can be used to build a quantum computer based on atomic qubits. The first few weeks I was getting familiar with optical instruments, and at the end I built a setup like this for one of the lasers.
The rest of the time my mentors and I worked on developing an algorithm that would efficiently load atoms into optical traps. For the most part this was programming, simulations, and analysis of results. And I found all of it interesting to do. The key nuance here is that this isn’t the kind of “interesting” where you’re learning something new and, because you know very little, everything seems cool to you. Very quickly that kind of “interesting” becomes boring, like in the case of experimental chemistry for me. Vacuum filtration, working in a glove box — magical and wondrous the first few times, and then exponentially downhill. I was afraid that working with optical instruments would be interesting at first, but then I’d get bored. Turns out, no. It’s like Lego: in general you’re making the same motions with similar pieces, but at the end you build/assemble something new. In chemistry I felt like I was making the same motions and the only differences were in the reagents — but those are sub-molecular changes; you can’t really feel them in reality, because at a glance it’s the same colorless liquid. Variety appeared there only when the color was different! Look at that, it’s yellow now :) Another difference between working with optical elements and chemical equipment is that with the former I have more room for imagination. For one, in chemistry no matter how you slice it you follow a protocol, because if you deviate even a little, everything can go sideways. In optics usually you need to route a laser from one point to another, and in that case you always have several options. You can place a mirror, a lens and a polarizing beam splitter one way, or simultaneously a bit differently; you can pick this focal distance, or a longer one, and that already determines this distance over here, etc.
Most of the time I spent on the computational part of the project: potential calculations (10-20 minutes), Monte-Carlo simulations (2-3 minutes), solving Lindbladian equations (5-6 minutes), and optimization problems for certain parameters. And this is exactly where point 2 from Why Chemistry Isn’t For Me comes in. There was a mix of math, physics, and programming in all of this, and that’s exactly what I needed! To be fair, most of the code was written by ChatGPT))), but nonetheless the analysis of the results and planning the next steps were on me. And at the very least, this work satisfied my thirst to simultaneously learn something new in physics and math, and then apply it.
I’ll repeat it again — I got incredibly lucky that I ended up in AMO physics (Quantum Optics), because as it turns out it combines everything I like! Before this summer, I thought only theoretical physics would be able to satisfy me. I picture myself like a pendulum, say a harmonic oscillator. Having learned what experimental chemistry is really like, I swung to the completely opposite side — I thought, well then it must be theoretical physics. I tried to find a position specifically in theoretical physics, being convinced that experimental physics wouldn’t bring me joy. First of all, I was naive to think I’d be useful in theory with minimal knowledge of quantum mech. Second, I was a fool, because during the time I didn’t have a theoretical base I didn’t go and do experiments. This little internship opened my eyes to how wrong I was about experimental physics, specifically in the area of AMO/Quantum Optics. Not only can theory attract me, but so can the physical realization of the process. I thought that the most interesting problems were in theory, and once you’ve answered them — you’re done. In abstract algebra and physics homework that’s probably true, but in reality it seems that the process of building/engineering is no less interesting and difficult.
Right now I’m having thoughts of dropping the math minor, and instead of three Topology courses taking courses in Applied Math and CS. I haven’t decided yet, but I’m leaning more and more toward it.