Lasing and Learning

I suppose I can sum up the past two days of work in this post.  It's pretty straightforward:  I've been taking spectra and crunching data.  The most difficult part is aligning the sample properly so that the pump laser is actually pumping the cavity.  I've slowly been improving my technique, but it usually takes me at least half an hour to get the first cavity of the day lasing well enough to start saving spectra.  It's a lot of translating crosshairs and rotating stages, with some very careful peering through an eyepiece and occasionally thumping the microscope.  Usually intentionally.

It's looking like the variation in spectral line width between individual lines of the same spectrum is on the order of the variation in the mean line width as a function of pump energy, so...boo.  I don't really know what else there is to say right now, except that experimental work has its frustrating moments.  And that I really hope it's not because I'm making some stupid mistake.  On the plus side, I've got Igor functions now for most of the tedious bits of the analysis.  Although if I can figure out how to automatically load large batches of text files as waves, my life will be marginally more interesting.

I'm slowly getting to know some of the other members of the lab group.  It's a very large group, working on several different projects, and there are students of all levels (well, masters and up, plus me), post-docs, professors...and researchers of many different nationalities.  Since papers and presentations are generally in English, everyone speaks enough technical English to communicate in the lab, luckily for me.  Most of the others speak French, of course, and at lunchtimes there's Chinese and Russian to be heard in conversations as well.

The lab goes to lunch every day as a group, which is nice.  That's when the French conversations really start picking up speed and overlapping - if I can learn to understand what they're saying, I'll be set for French comprehension in almost any situation.  Although most of the other people I've talked to aren't very fond of the cafeteria food, I don't mind it at all.  Their complaints often focus on how bland the food is, which is not something with which I take issue.  Lunch is a good deal - for 3.05 euro, I get two entree-type foods and at least two side dishes like cheese, yogurt, salad, or dessert.  And a bread roll.  There's not nearly as much choice as at the dining hall at Mudd - there are two possibilities for each of the two entree things, usually, and a handful of side dish choices.  I've been eating a lot of pasta and fish, and it's been fine.  The beverage is water, poured into small glasses from pitchers at each table.  No complaints from me.

After lunch, there's coffee in a different common room - hot chocolate for me.  I hope I can find the same brand of hot chocolate in a grocery store, because I'd like to bring some back with me.  It's quite good.  All in all, the lunch break lasts almost exactly an hour and fifteen minutes each day, from 1:00 to 2:15.  Excuse me, from 13h00 to 14h15.  I enjoy the way it cleanly breaks the workday into two halves.

My commute is the shortest among the REU students; I only take the RER four stops, from Cité Universitaire to Bagneux.  I spend more time walking to and from the stops than riding the train.  I'm still figuring out when rush hour really hits in the morning and the evening.  Sometimes the trains are quite crowded, even though I have my commute reversed from the typical worker: I leave Paris in the morning and return in the evening.  But mostly it's not bad.

Today after work I went to dinner with Linda, Lauren, Chrissy, and Chau.  Happy birthday, Lauren!  We ate near the St. Michel fountain and I had a tasty omelet.  Then I walked around Notre Dame (again) and returned to the Armenian Students' House.