Chris Larson

Graduate Research Assistant

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate studying experimental nuclear physics under the guidance of Prof. Renee Fatemi.

My current research involves studying QCD through the extraction of the unpolarized transverse momentum dependent jet fragmentation function (TMDJFF) for pions in proton-proton collisions at STAR. This involves understanding and correcting for various physical and detector-introduced effects which are ultimately convoluted with the desired function to produce the observed signal. With the use of PYTHIA generated monte-carlo data run through a GEANT recreation of the detector, I train machine learning models to capture the complex correlations between observables and unfold high-dimensional data along many observables simultaneously. 

During my undergraduate education at Miami University, I worked under Prof. Edward Carlo Samson writing 3+1D simulations of BEC transport, with a wavefunction evolving according to the Gross-Pitaevski Equations (GPE). I looked at a range of trajectories and trap potentials, with a focus on the advantages of shortcuts-to-adiabaticity (STA) in maintaining the fidelity of the wavefunction post-transport. 

Outside of physics, I enjoy learning new music for the marimba, playing video games, and taking care of my cat, Souffle (she's orange!).