Plasma thrusters have found increasing application for station-keeping of earth orbiting satellites as well as some interplanetary missions, yet a few of the finer details of the basic plasma physics of these thrusters remain...
in our case several blackened, corrugated aluminum mesh grids. The grids transfer their thermal energy to the passing air. This paper theoretically and experimentally investigates the optimal number of grids to maximize...
Many oscillatory systems of great interest exhibit pulsing behavior. The analysis of such oscillators has historically utilized a constant-phase model such as the Kuramoto equation to describe their dynamics. These models...
This project investigated the dynamics of 2-d easy axis magnetic spin systems. In particular, I studied the formation of intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) which arise from nonlinear behavior that manifests primarily as energy...
In this project, I used various numerical techniques to investigate the existence of nonlinear, spatially localized modes for vibrational and magnetic lattices. I started by using Newton-Raphson algorithm to solve the...
A fundamental question in molecular dynamics is the following: Given some bond-localized excitation of a molecule, what will be the pathway and rate of energy ow throughout the molecule's various degrees of freedom? This notion...
RR Lyrae stars are pulsating variables that have been used in determining the cosmic distance scale. We have defined under-observed RR Lyrae variable stars to be those RR Lyrae stars that are missing some information in the...
Spin waves have been researched in quantum physics and solid state physics since the discovery of spin wave solutions to a magnetic lattice by Felix Bloch in the early 20th century. In this thesis, we analyze a one-dimensional...