Best. Referee Report. EVER.: The Making of “Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions” (part 2)

I said in the previous post that the time-resolved collision paper was one of my favorite experiences in grad school, even the paper-writing process. It’s not so much that the paper-writing process was all that exceptionally good– it was the usual “paper torture,” arguing over every single word in an effort to fit everything into… Continue reading Best. Referee Report. EVER.: The Making of “Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions” (part 2)

Published
Categorized as MXP

A One-Afternoon Experiment: The Making of “Time Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions” (part 1)

As I said in the introduction to the previous post, this was the first paper on which I was the lead author, and it may be my favorite paper of my career to date. I had a terrific time with it, and it led to enough good stories that I’m going to split the making-of… Continue reading A One-Afternoon Experiment: The Making of “Time Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions” (part 1)

Scooped; or, The Making of “Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices”

The experiment described in the previous post was published in early 1998, but the work was done in 1997. This was the year when things really turned around for me in grad school– the optical control paper was done in the summer 0f ’94, and ’95 and ’96 were just a carnival of pain. Everything… Continue reading Scooped; or, The Making of “Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices”

Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices

I announced my intention to do some research blogging a little while ago, and managed one pair of posts before the arrival of SteelyKid kind of distracted me. I’m still planning to complete the Metastable Xenon Project blog, though (despite the utter lack of response to the first two), and the second real paper I… Continue reading Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices

The Making Of “Optical Control of Ultracold Collisions”

One of the things I’d like to accomplish with the current series of posts is to give a little insight into what it’s like to do science. This should probably seem familiar to those readers who are experimental scientists, but might be new to those who aren’t. I think that this is one of the… Continue reading The Making Of “Optical Control of Ultracold Collisions”

Peer-Reviewed Egoboo: The Metastable Xenon Project

I’ve been slacking a bit, lately, in terms of putting science-related content on the blog. Up until last week, most of my physics-explaining energy was going into working on the book, and on top of that, I’ve been a little preoccupied with planning for the arrival of FutureBaby. I’d like to push things back in… Continue reading Peer-Reviewed Egoboo: The Metastable Xenon Project