| Date | Speaker |
|---|---|
| Friday, November 7 | Cristiano Galbiati, Princeton University "Nobel Liquids - The Revoluiton in Direct Dark Matter Searches" Noble liquid detectors are changing in a fundamental way the field of direct dark matter searches. They feature excellent discrimination between minimum ionizing events - due to background radioactivity - and nuclear recoils - the signature of WIMP dark matter interactions -. Their unmatched promise of a rapid scaling of the target mass (by 2-3 orders of magnitude!) and of a corresponding increase in sensitivity is driving a large number of researchers into the field: it's the 21st century gold rush of astroparticle physics. Will they provide the first successful exploration of the dark sector? |
| Friday, November 14 | Kendall Mahn, Columbia University "Short baseline neutrino disappearance at Fermilab" To search for neutrino oscillations in the few eV2 Dm2 region, the MiniBooNE experiment can either look for electron neutrino appearance or muon neutrino disappearance. Disappearance measurements are an uniquely sensitive probe of oscillations to sterile neutrinos or other exotic processes such as neutrino decay. The 74% pure, high statistics CCQE muon neutrino sample in MiniBooNE can be used to make sensitive searches for disappearance of muon neutrinos and for the first time antineutrino disappearance in the few eV2 Dm2 range. By combining MiniBooNE with SciBooNE, a near detector recently added to the beamline, even better sensitivity to disappearance can be achieved. Results for the MiniBooNE neutrino and antineutrino disappearance measurement will be presented along with the prospects for combined MiniBooNE/SciBooNE measurements. |
| Friday, November 21 | Adrian Galvan, University of Maryland Precision spectroscopy in Fr and Rb for studies of the electroweak interaction in atomic systems |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Wednesday, January 7 |
Robert Wiringa, Argonne National Lab "Nuclear Quantum Monte Carlo" Accurate calculations of the structure of light nuclei, starting from "bare" two-nucleon interactions that fit NN scattering data, have become feasible over the last decade using quantum Monte Carlo methods. Three-nucleon interactions and two-body electroweak current operators are important additional inputs. Properties we can study include binding and excitation energies, relative stability, one- and two-nucleon densities in configuration and momentum space, electromagnetic moments and electroweak transitions. We are also developing the tools for nucleon-nucleus scattering and electroweak capture reactions. In these studies we can see that nuclear structure really does arise from these complicated "bare" nuclear forces. Finally, we can use these tools to study more speculative issues, such as how nuclear structure evolves with the complexity of the nuclear forces, or how it might differ with changes in fundamental constants. |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Thursday, January 8 2:00 p.m. |
Rocco Schiavilla, Jefferson Lab 1. Nuclear electromagnetic currents in chiral EFT 2. Parity-violating observables in A=3 and 4 systems This seminar is a progress report on two (time permitting) unrelated topics: i) a derivation, up to one loop, of nuclear EM currents in a chiral EFT approach including pions, nucleons and Deltas as explicit degrees of freedom, and a first study of A=2 and 3 observables based on these currenst; ii) a study of neutron spin rotation in n-d scattering and the longitudinal asymmetry in the charge exchange process n-3He --> p-3H. |
| Friday, January 9 | Keh-Fei Liu, University of Kentucky "Results on finite density phase transition and nucleon structure" |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Thursday, January 15 2:00 p.m. |
Michael Ramsey-Musolf, University of Wisconsin and Caltech "Minimal Electroweak Scale Cosmology at the LHC" Abstract: It is well known that new physics at the electroweak scale could solve important puzzles in cosmology, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of the cosmic baryon asymmetry. In this talk, I discuss some of the simplest, non-supersymmetric possibilities, their collider signatures, and the prospects for their discovery and identification at the LHC. |
| Friday, January 16 | Yingchuan Li, University of Wisconsin "Supersymmetric electroweak baryogenesis and electric dipole moments" The CP violation needed in the supersymmetric electroweak baryogenesis scenario is strongly constrained by the experimental upper bound on electric dipole moments (EDMs). We calculate the full chargino-neutralino two-loop EDM contributions as the most relevant part to elctroweak baryogenesis. We observe that the bino-driven electroweak baryogenesis scenario is the least constrained one by EDM limits. |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Thursday, January 22 2:00 p.m. |
Gerry Garvey, LANL New Results from the MiniBooNE Detector The MiniBooNE group has new results from high statistics data from the muon neutrino and muon anti-neutrino beams produced at the Fermilab Booster. There is a clear difference between the predicted and observed spectra of electron neutrino-like events. Preliminary results will also be reported for the yields observed from off-axis muon neutrinos from the NUMI beam. |
| Friday, January 23 | Bira van Kolck, University of Arizona Nuclear Clusters in Effective Field Theory: Does EFT stand for extreme fine-tuning? An effective field theory has been formulated to describe shallow nuclear systems, where cluster structure appears. As an example I will discuss alpha-particle clusters, in particular nucleon-alpha and two-alpha systems. We find remarkable fine-tuning between strong and electromagnetic interactions, beyond the relatively mild fine-tuning in strong interactions seen in the two-nucleon system. |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Monday, January 26 |
Ryoichi Seki, CSUN Lattice Calculation of Thermal Properties of Low-Density Neutron Matter Determinantal quantum Monte Carlo calculation on 3D cubic lattices is carried out using pionless neutron-neutron interactions, by applying power-counting rules of nuclear effective field theory and by taking thermodynamic and continuum limits. The physics of low-density neutron matter is identified as a BCS-Bose-Einstein condensation crossover. The 1S0 pairing gap at T = 0 is found to be approximately 30% smaller than BCS results, and the density-temperature phase diagram is determined. Comparison with other works and relevance to neutron stars will be discussed. |
| Friday, January 30 | Dan-Olof Riska, Helsinki Institute of Physics "Seaquarks and baryon form factors" |
| Friday, February 6 | Prof. Gordon Cates, Univ. of Virginia "Polarized He-3, the electric form factor of the neutron, and quark orbital angular momentum" |
| Friday, February 13 | Bei Cai, Queen's University "Searching for Dark Matter with Liquid Argon -- the DEAP/CLEAN Project" |
| Special Kellogg Seminar Wednesday, February 18 2:00 p.m. |
Bjorn Garbrecht, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison "Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe and the Mass Spectrum at the Electroweak Scale" In many models for baryogenesis (e.g. leptogenesis) the conversion factor of baryon minus lepton number B-L to baryon number B is of importance. Through simple arguments of equilibrium thermodynamics I show that B/(B-L) is sensitive at the level of order one to the particle spectrum at the electroweak scale (e.g. masses of super-particles) and to lepton flavour violation. Simlar arguments apply to the more involved problem of electroweak baryogenesis, where also the size of tau and b Yukawa couplings is crucial. It turns out that the sign of the baryon asymmetry may depend on the mass parameters and I also present a scenario where baryogenesis is primarily driven by leptons. |
| Friday, March 6 | Fenfang Wu, UC Irvine "ANITA-I results: neutrino flux limits & neutrino-nucleon cross section constraints at UHE" |
| Friday, May 22 | Pavel Fileviez Perez, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison "Testing the origin of neutrino masses at the LHC" |
Leona Kershaw, 6 March 2009