Graduate Student
Astronomy & Astrophysics – University of Toronto
About Me
I am a graduate student at the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. I work on the SPIDER experiment under the advisory of Barth Netterfield, as well as the Simons Observatory under Adam Hincks.
My research interests are in cosmology, signal processing, and musical acoustics.
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a next-generation experiment probing the cosmic microwave background (CMB) being built on Cerro Toco, in the Atacama Desert at an altitude of 5,200 metres.
Its key targets include: the physics of primordial perturbations, identifying the correct model of an early inflationary epoch of the Universe; effective number of relativistic species; the sum of neutrino masses; observable deviations from the cosmological constant paradigm; galaxy evolution; and the redshift and duration of the reionization epoch.
SPIDER
Listening for the echoes of inflation
SPIDER is a balloon-borne telescope designed to provide a new constraint on the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves, achieved through a combination of its raw instrumental sensitivity and ability to remove the competing signal coming from warm dust in the Milky Way.
New 285 GHz detectors, to be flown on the second scheduled sub-orbital flight over Antarctica in Late 2022, will take advantage of low atmospheric contamination in the upper stratosphere to map foreground dust emission.
Combined with data in the 94 and 150 GHz bands taken during its first 17-day flight in 2015, SPIDER will probe inflationary models characterized by an amplitude of r ~ 0.03 at a 3σ-level.
The physics and psychophysics of musical instruments
From a scientist’s perspective, the acoustics of musical instruments is quite unlike most other topics in science.
The acoustics part is innocent enough, but the musical part, as it were, is far trickier to decipher. What might have
been a routine problem in classical physics and materials engineering is suddenly convoluted with aspects of human
perception and psychoacoustics. Yet it remains a fascinating topic for many, in large part because music is so prevalent
in everyday life. As the noted violin researcher Jim Woodhouse explains, “… the distinctive flavour of the
subject comes from the fact that the key questions are posed by subjective judgments: what is ‘good sound’?”
Massive improvements in measurement technologies and analysis techniques have greatly enhanced our understanding of the
acoustic behaviour of the violin, but all attempts to find a scientific criterion describing a “good” violin thus
far have been inconclusive. Meanwhile, numerous psychoacoustic challenges remain. For example, two violinists will not listen
to or judge an instrument in the exact same way, nor would they necessarily use the same verbal descriptions for the same
phenomenon.
Violin acoustics is a fascinating topic. For those so inclined, Jim Woodhouse’s
2014 review
of the subject provides an excellent introduction to the history, recent developments, and outstanding problems in this field.
