A recent graduate of Hamilton College, Elise LePage ’18, was named a finalist for the 2018 LeRoy Apker Award. The award is honors undergraduate physics achievement conferred through the American Physical Society and highlights the potential of physics student for a successful career in the field.
LePage was one of six finalists who presented their theses in August to the selection committee in Washington, D.C. As a finalist, LePage received an honorarium of $2,000, and the College’s Physics Department also received an award of $1,000 to help fund undergraduate student research in physics.
LePage submitted the thesis she wrote for the Physics Department’s senior program, in which students work closely with professors on research projects over the course of their senior year, focusing on one of the projects in that professor’s portfolio of research.
LePage wrote her thesis, titled “On the Quantization of Plane Gravitational Waves in Loop Quantum Gravity”, and collaborated with Professor Seth Major, chair of the Physics Department.
In her thesis, LePage explained that all forces in physics, other than gravity, have a quantum description. The goal for her project was to find the quantization of gravity. The lack of a quantum description of gravity “is a problem because there are gravitational effects that can’t be explained by general relativity […] Loop quantum gravity is one approach to creating a quantum theory of gravity.” LePage explained for her thesis that she “investigated what a quantum description of gravitational waves looks like in loop quantum gravity.”
Professor Major explained that while he and LePage did not complete the quantization of gravity, they “made significant progress over what had been done before on the model.”
Each year, as College physics professors look at senior projects in the department, they consider whether there is any student research that is deserving of a nomination for the LeRoy Apker Award. Once nominated, the student must present the work of their thesis, complete a write-up of their thesis, and submit recommendations from professors. LePage is the first student to be nominated by the department for the award in several years.
LePage originally intended to study mathematics at Hamilton, but she grew increasingly frustrated with the level of abstraction in pure math. She only became interested in physics the spring of her sophomore year, when she talked with students in the department. LePage explained her interest in that, unlike math, “physics provides a connection to reality.”
LePage began working on her thesis in the summer before her senior year and continued through the fall of that year. Even after her thesis was officially completed, LePage continued to research her topic through the spring of her senior year and the summer after graduation. “I strongly suspect that this work will be part of a paper that we’ll publish at some point, so she will certainly be part of that project when that happens,” said Major.
LePage is currently enrolled in Perimeter Scholars International, a one-year master’s-level course in theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. Once she completes that program, she will attend the University of California at Berkeley, where she will work towards her doctorate in physics.
LePage commented, “I’m hoping to continue working on this topic, but I’m still unsure of what area I’ll ultimately decide to focus on for my PhD.”
