64th Annual STS (2004-2005)
Finalists
Pooja Sunil Jotwani

FLORIDA
Pooja Sunil Jotwani, 17, of Pembroke Pines, researched the effects of a quark matter core on neutron star cooling for her Intel Science Talent Search in physics. Her observations of cooling neutron stars, as well as their physical properties such as neutrino emission processes and the heat quantities of the interior and exterior, provide information about the states of matter at supernuclear densities. She describes how cooling curves allow theoretical physicists to better predict the stars' internal composition. When cooling curves are combined with the recently discovered Gapless Color-Flavor Locked (gCFL) quark matter, the surprising results show old stars with gCFL cores cooling more slowly than nuclear matter stars. The discovery of gCFL has motivated astronomers to search for quark matter in aged neutron stars, a category that is seldom studied. A student of Charles W. Flanagan High School, Pooja is active in both the math club and debate team. The daughter of Sunil and Kiran Jotwani, she was born in India and is head of the youth group in the Sindhi Association of South Florida. Pooja plans to attend MIT where she can pursue a career in astrophysics.