And the slow week winds its way to a conclusion. Today, Mélanie's husband was ill, and she had to stay home for most of the day to watch her young son. Maxime and soldiered on, though really there wasn't much that I could find to do. The triumph of the day was my trial-and-error approach to determine the index of refraction that we would predict for the cavity after seeing its spectrum. Although the value we expected was 1.50 plus or minus a percent or so, I found that a refractive index of 1.62 is in much better agreement with the observed spectra of both the 160um and 140um true Fabry-Perot cavities. Is this due to diffusive effects? Am I just calculating something incorrectly?
The afternoon was tense (for certain members of the group) and then festive (for everyone), as a result of Yi's successful thesis defense. As I listened to her presentation, it struck me once again that I'm very fortunate to be a native English speaker in the field of physics. Yi's native language is Chinese, and she speaks French and English as well. Her defense was in English, and I personally think that I would find it very, very difficult to give such a stressful talk in a second language. Well done, Yi! There was a sort of reception/buffet afterwards with very tasty pastry-cookie-snack foods as well as interesting Chinese food (made properly, I think).
I spent the evening running errands and preparing to leave for Switzerland tomorrow. It will be my first time traveling alone internationally. Fortunately Switzerland is a very friendly country to tourists, and I will be meeting family as soon as I arrive, so (knock on wood) I just have to manage a few train stations. Good luck to me!
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