Tristan Swartz

Majors: Physics and Biology Minor: Mathematics

University Honors with Honors in Physics

Supervisor: Dr. Tim Black

DEVELOPMENT OF SOFTWARE FOR VISUALIZATION CORRELATIONS BETWEEN PROTON-DEUTERON SCATTERING PARAMETERS

The analysis of the proton-deuteron elastic scattering database below the deuteron breakup threshold utilizes a Monte Carlo Markov Chain Evolutionary Algorithm to select expectation values of various parameters at various energies. The uncertainty values associated with these parameters are the result of the inability of the observables of the data set to uniquely determine the output parameter values. Various subsets of the parameters are expected to exhibit statistical correlations in their values. A new approach for displaying these correlation values in addition to calculating and listing them in a table is to generate a 2-D surface plot in probability space between given pairs of possibly correlated values. A program was devised to load, analyze, and display these correlations derived from the data set in this for using the Matlab® software. The graph shape should depict this information in a much more efficient and utilizable manner.