Document and Software Downloads

My Documents

Here are a few of the documents that I have written that may be downloaded. Most of these documents are meant as an introductory survey of the associated topic and are by no means exhaustive.

	A Discussion of Oscillator Strengths and Related Issues A development of the relationship between absorption strength (integrated absorption coefficient) and the quantum mechanical oscillator strength for dielectric solid-state materials. The relationships between absorption strength, oscillator strength, and the quantum mechanical electric dipole moment matrix elements are then independently derived from both thermodynamic and quantum mechanical arguments.
	Introduction to the Numerical Integration of Functions and Ordinary Differential Equations A brief introduction and explanation of methods for numerically integrating discreet data, analytical functions, and ordinary differential equations. Covers Newton-Cotes, Romberg, Gaussian, Runge-Kutta, predictor-corrector, and Burlisch-Stoer methods.
	An Introduction to Semiconductor Radiation Detectors An overview of the theory of photoconductor and photodiode detectors. Discussed the basic theory and operation of these devices as well as the factors that influence their time-response and gain.
	An Introduction to the Aberrations of Optical Systems Discussion of the Seidel abberations in imaging systems. Also discusses chromatic aberrations, fifth-order aberrations, diffractive effects, and aberrations due to the physical limitations of optical elements.
	Optical Detection of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Paramagnetic Ions A survey of methods for optically detecting and studying nuclear transitions of paramagnetic ions such as the Lanthanides. Includes a discussion of hyperfine and superhyperfine holeburning spectroscopy, photon echo nuclear double resonance, Raman heterodyne nuclear magnetic resonance, and quantum beat free induction decay.
	Four-Wave Mixing and its Applications An introduction to the theory, techniques, and applications of FWM. Briefly covers CARS, RIKE, SRS, TIRES, and degenerate FWM and applications such as optical data processing, phase conjugation, and optical spectroscopy.
	Thick Lenses and Optical Systems A document on geometrical optics for thick lenses and optical systems meant to summarize and supplement the treatment provided in Hecht's excellent book on optics. Includes a discussion of the six cardinal points and their corresponding planes. Also discusses and explains matrix methods in geometrical optics.
	Operational Procedure for X-ray Diffraction at MSU Instructions for using the MSU physics department's x-ray source and Laue camera to analyze the crystallographic orientation of single crystal samples.
	Click Here to View My Research Documents that are Available for Download

My Presentations

Here are HTML slides from some of the general physics and spectroscopy presentations that I have given. Most of these presentations are meant as a short introductory survey of the associated topic and are by no means exhaustive.

	Energy Level Structures of Transition Metal Ions in Crystals Slides from a short presentation on the theory of the energy levels of transition metal ions for both free-ions and ions in a crystalline matrix. Includes a brief discussion of common methods for dealing with the terms resulting from the free-ion Hamiltonian and treating the effect of the crystalline host lattice, or "crystal field", through the theory of mathematical groups. Also introduces ligand field theory.
	Optical Detection of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Paramagnetic Ions in Solids Slides from a short presentation on methods for optically detecting and studying nuclear transitions of paramagnetic ions such as the Lanthanides. Includes an introduction to holeburning spectroscopy, ODNMR, PENDOR, Raman heterodyne nuclear magnetic resonance, and quantum beat free induction decay.
	Click Here to View My Research Presentations that are Available Online

My Programs

Here are some of the 32-bit Windows applications that I have written that are of general use. To install any of these programs, download the self-extracting setup files by clicking the corresponding link and then run the executable and follow the instructions of the installer program.

	Analysis Coming Soon (when I finish the help file)!
	Spectroscopy Unit Conversion and Air Refraction Correction Tool This program converts between different spectroscopic units for the wavelength, frequency, and energy of light. The conversion can be done from measured values for air under any desired conditions to their vacuum values or from vacuum values to air values. High precision correction is used based on the Ciddor equations, including air pressure, temperature, humidity, and CO2 content. The program also can convert changes in the values between different units (e.g. what frequency difference a change in wavelength corresponds to at a specific center wavelength, etc.).
	Liquid Helium Vapor Pressure and Temperature Conversion Tool This program calculates the temperature of liquid 4He from the measured vapor pressure and can also calculate the required vapor pressure needed to reach a desired temperature using ITS-90 equations. The program also includes a pressure offset for convenience to allow for calibration offsets in any actual pressure gauge used to measure the vapor pressure.
	Digitizer Digitizer is a program that allows information embedded in a graphical format to be extracted and converted to a numerical format for analysis or manipulation. The program outputs a two-column text file containing the x and y values for each point extracted from an image file (in windows bitmap or metafile format). To establish the x and y scales, the user selects positions on the image and inputs the corresponding numerical values. The program can then scan an independently selected region of the image and analyze the color variations using one of several methods, or the user can simply select individual points from the image (Click here for a screenshot).

More Documents Available on the Web

Here are several links to useful and informative physics and chemistry documents on the web. Most of these documents are directly related to different aspects of my research on rare-earth-activated optical materials.

	A Lanthanide Lanthology A-L A guide containing information on a variety of topics such as the sources, production, nature and uses of the lanthanide materials.
	A Lanthanide Lanthology M-Z A guide containing information on a variety of topics such as the sources, production, nature and uses of the lanthanide materials.
	Spin Dynamics and Spectroscopy A series of lecture notes on spin dynamics, NMR, and relaxation processes by J-Ph Ansermet of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne physics department.
	Cerium: a guide to its role in Chemical Technology A booklet featuring the chemistry and many uses of Cerium.
	Physical Review Style and Notation Guide An excellent resource for style in writing scientific papers, regardless of whether the paper will be submitted to an APS journal or another journal.
	Introduction to Crystallography and Mineral Crystal Systems A nice introduction to crystallography featured on a collector's site.
	Lanthanides & Actinides Here is a very nice overview of the history, properties, and chemistry of lanthanides and actinides written by S.J. Heyes for a chemistry class at Oxford University.
	The Analysis of Observations An extensive textbook style resource by William A. Cooper on the statistical analysis of data with specific examples for the atmospheric science.
	Structures of Simple Inorganic Solids A series of lectures on crystal structure and bonding given by Dr. S.J. Heyes for the 1st year inorganic chemistry course at Oxford University.
	Lasers - An Overview An excellent general overview by Dieter Schuöcker of lasers, their properties, and practical issues related to their operation.
	Introduction to Lasers An excellent series of course notes by M. M. Fejer for the introduction to lasers course at Stanford.
	The Data Analysis BriefBook A reference handbook written in encyclopedic format that covers subjects in statistics, computing, analysis, and related fields.
	Vacuum Systems Some excellent lecture notes on the general theory, instrumentation, and use of vacuum systems written by R. B. Darling for an electrical engineering class at the University of Washington.
	Mineralogy Mineralogy lecture notes and tutorials by David Sherman from the Dept. of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.
	A History of Electroluminescent Displays An overview of the electroluminescence and its application to display technology.
	Optical Physics and Quantum Electronics A series of lecture notes by R. Victor Jones prepared for the Applied Physics class on optical technology at Harvard University.
	Theory and Uses of Shear Plate Collimation Testers A short introduction by Malvin Teich of Boston University to the theory and quantitative use of wedged shearing interferometers ,also known as shear plates or "collimation testers".
	Crystals: More Than Meets the Eye A short introduction to the structure and uses of crystals written by Lois Van Wagner.
	2-D NMR Spectroscopy An introduction to the theory and techniques of 2-D NMR spectroscopy in liquids.
	Fiber Optic Technology and its Role in the Information Revolution An introduction to optical fiber communication technology and the theory, technology, and methods that make it possible, by Christopher C. Davis.
	Properties of Oscillator Signals and Measurement Methods A discussion of the frequency stability of oscillators, its importance, and how it may be measured, compiled by members of the Time and Frequency Division at NIST.

Freeware on the Web

Here are links to some of my favorite free software available on the web. Entries marked with a star are highly recommended for everyone.

	Spectra A very nice program for doing crystal field fitting of experimental f electron spectra (lanthanides and actinides). This windows based program has many features and is is a tremendous aid to anyone who wishes to obtain crystal field parameters, energy levels, and wavefunctions from observed experimental energy levels and known point symmetry.
	Versaverter A comprehensive unit conversion utility that covers many scientific and engineering units as well as conventional measures. The best freeware unit converter that I have seen.
	Copernic Agent An amazing client-based web meta-search tool. This program is a meta-searcher that sends your search query to multiple web search engines and then compiles and organizes the top results from each site. This compiled list of results may then be explored using the built in browser or the default system browser by selecting entries or using the helpful navigation window. But beyond this, it is a tool that allows you to organize and store the results of your web searches, a feature that quickly becomes indispensable once you use it.
	Turbonote A nice little freeware program to make virtual "sticky notes" on your computer desktop. There are dozens of these programs out there, but this is the one that I personally prefer. To obtain the freeware version of this program (the 5.0+ version is not free), follow the link and then scroll down to the "how do I get a copy" section and click on the "Turbonote" link in italics, or just click here. This program starts up with windows automatically by default, but I usually disable this by removing the shortcut from the startup folder in the Windows start menu (i.e. the start => programs => StartUp, usually equivalent to C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp). If you want this, or any other, program to autostart with windows, just paste a new shortcut into the startup folder.
	Satori PhotoXL The most advanced freeware image/photo editing program that I have come across. If you don't want to buy Photoshop or Lview, give this program a try. The image layering capabilities are particularly nice.
	WordWeb An outstanding dictionary/thesaurus tool. This program is fully functional as a stand alone application, or can be used as an integrated tool in the newer versions of Microsoft Word. This program not only gives you full definitions for each word organized by part of speech, it also gives you synonyms, antonyms, words that have similar meaning, and conceptually related words such as types, types of, parts of, causes of, what it entails, etc.. Very highly recommended.
	Xteq System Setup The most complete and advanced Windows tweak-up utility available. This program allows you to customize many features of Windows and has options specific to each version of Windows. The only reason that this download doesn't have a star next to it is because, like any power tool, it can cause problems if not used properly, and therefore may not be for everyone. My suggestion is that if you use this very nice program (I use it all the time and it is one of my first installs each time I buy a new machine), always run it in safe mode. In safe mode no changes will ever be made to your OS without specific step-by-step approval from the user.
	Extended Character Map The character map utility that ships with Windows is pretty weak, and this program provides a very nice alternative. If you often look for obscure symbols, want to see exactly what characters are included in each font set, or just want to see how characters look in different fonts and point sizes, give this program a try.
	Calc98 There are a lot of calculator programs out there, but I have found this one to be the most friendly for scientific calculations. Lots of options and flexibility.
	Cad Standard Lite A free 2D CAD program. If you don't have the funds to buy AutoCAD, you can give this program a try.
	Ftp Explorer A great free ftp client. This is a GUI ftp program that allows you to treat ftp sites much the same way as folders on your hard drive and also supports drop and drag download/upload, multiple connections, and organizes your ftp connection parameters for you. Very nice.
	Dimension4 The best atomic clock synchronization tool out there. Can connect to many educational, military, and commercial sites to precisely synchronize your system clock to an atomic clock reference. I use this program to periodically synchronize to NIST.
	Ghostscript and Ghostview If you need to work with postscript (.ps) or encapsulated postscript (.eps) files, these are two programs that you should have. Ghostscript is the engine for working with these files, and Ghostview is the GUI that makes it easy to view and manipulate files using Ghostscript.
	Minos A free 3D Solid CAD program. If you want to give 3D modeling a try but don't want to invest in the expensive software, you should try this program.
	Quotes 2001 This program allows you to organize your email signature files. In particular, it allows you to save files of text strings that can be periodically exchanged in your signature file. This program comes with a fairly extensive collection of quotations in several categories and thus allows you to include quotations in your email that periodically change at selected intervals. Since the quote files are just simple text, it is trivial to customize the contents. This is one program that I always have running.
	Terragen This program is absolutely amazing. Terragen allows you to create photo-realistic fully 3D terrains on your computer. A huge number of user set parameters for terrain, surfaces, sunlight, atmosphere, clouds, water, etc. allow incredible effects to be achieved. With a little practice, you can begin to make truly wonderful CG landscapes. I used Terragen to generate the base landscape for the background on my main web page (I then used Lview Pro for the remainder of the editing).
	IrfanView A very nice image viewer with editing and filtering capabilities. This program supports almost every graphics format and even a few video formats (way beyond what photoshop and lview can handle). If you ever have a graphics file that your image editor won't open (which seems to happen all the time), you can use this program to edit the file, or simply to convert to any format that you want.
	BK Periodic Table A nice periodic table application. This program provides a graphical table of the elements and supplies information about the properties of each. Also allows you to vary the temperature to see when each element changes phase and can plot parameter trends. Nice to have on your machine to replace the paper table that you can never find when you want it.
	Arachnophilia An outstanding HTML text editor. This program is completely customizable and provides many features and capabilities that greatly simplifies writing your own HTML. I write all of my own HTML directly rather than using a GUI based application and I use this program as the text editor.
	HTML Reference Library My opinion is that if you want to write HTML, you should have this reference library on your machine. This library covers all standard HTML as well as many browser specific tags and options. It is also an excellent reference on style sheets and introduces scripting (javascript and VB script) as well as other concepts of Dynamic HTML.
	WOCAR A good optical character recognition program. If you have some scanned text or images that you want to convert to text, give this program a try.
	ReadPlease 2003 A very good text-to-speech engine. Simply copy the desired text to the windows clipboard and the program will convert it to speech. Works very well for most text, but has some trouble pronouncing complex terms and reading documents that contain many symbols. I occasionally use this program to read back text that I have written so that I get an idea of how it sounds when spoken.