Day 2

I couldn't believe I loved my internship so much that I got up on time even though I went to bed at around 3 am this morning. 

I was so surprised that Cayla brought us three textbooks, one of which I read a lot was Introduction to Optics. Cayla was so thoughtful that she gave us a list of chapters related to our projects so we didn't need to look for the useful information ourselves. I read chapter 4, 6, and 26. I'd read a little bit wave function before, but I realized wave functions could be way more complicated than I thought it was. After learning plane wave equation, I tried to derive spherical and cylindrical wave equations by using what I learned in math class, but failed :(

Without knowing how to solve those complex differential equations, I memorized the equations instead. Then I went over the electromagnetic waves, Einstein A and B coefficients, and Boltzmann distribution, etc.

As I planned early early this morning, I started working on the two papers Dr. Qiao sent me after reading the textbooks. These two papers are related to Pump-Probe project, on which I'm gonna work this summer. One paper is concentrated on the morphological effect of femtosecond laser while another paper talks more about the reflection of femtosecond laser. I understood most setups and procedures in the papers, but I still need to spend more time on some physical equations.

After reading the papers, I was able to watch Dr. Han operating on the laser system. It was truly amazing and every instrument looked so professional.

Finally, I was reading the "ProcessNF shot report 40" and "FluenceMap 40" code and considering how to analyze the laser beams. John helped explain me the Gaussian function in such a detailed way that I clearly understood the concept as well as how to use Gaussian functions to model the laser pulses. Really productive day!