Events Archive

Dark Cosmos Seminar - 2/20 - 4PM - David Dunsky (NYU) "Primordial Black Holes from Axion Domain Wall Collapse" - Jadwin JH room
Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 4:00 pm5:30 pm

Besides providing a possible explanation to the strong CP problem and dark matter, the QCD axion possesses a rich cosmology. For example, if PQ breaking occurs after inflation, then axion cosmic strings form. Near the QCD phase transition, every axion string become attached to a domain wall which pull on the strings and cause the string-wall…

Speaker
Faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos Seminar - Decoding Dark Matter through the Lens of Machine Learning - Jadwin Joseph Henry room - 4 PM
Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

The particle nature of dark matter and its role in galactic structure formation, especially at the small scales, are among the greatest outstanding questions in Lambda-CDM cosmology. Notable challenges include the core-cusp problem in dwarf galaxies and the potential discrepancies in the high-redshift galaxy abundance observed by the James Webb…

Speaker
Faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos - Stringent constraints on intra-galactic substructure and the primordial power spectrum from ultra-faint dwarf dynamics - Joseph Henry - 4 PM
Tue, Dec 5, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Decades of direct, indirect and collider searches of dark matter have set stringent constraints pushing us to entertain the possibility that dark matter interacts with us purely gravitationally. In this nightmare scenario, the underlying particle physics of dark matter as well as our cosmological history could still be discerned purely…

Speaker
Faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos Seminar - The quest for dark matter with LZ, a US flagship experiment - Joseph Henry - 4PM
Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a direct detection dark matter experiment currently being operated at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota. The experiment utilizes a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC)  to primarily look for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The active TPC…

Speaker
Dark Cosmos Seminar - Dumb Machine Learning for Physics - Joseph Henry - 4 PM
Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Machine learning is now a part of physics for the foreseeable future, but many deep learning tools, architectures, and algorithms are imported from industry to physics with minimal modifications. Does physics really need all of these fancy techniques, or does “dumb” machine learning with the simplest possible neural network suffice? The answer…

Speaker
Dark Cosmos Seminar - Searching for Light Dark Matter with the DarkSide Program - Chair's Conf. room - 3:30 PM
Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 3:30 pm4:30 pm

Dark matter is a hypothetical matter in the universe introduced to coherently explain observations ranging from the scale of galaxies to the whole of the universe. The DarkSide program is a direct dark matter detection experiment that utilizes dual-phase argon time projection chambers. Its preceding experiment, DarkSide-50, has set the…

Speaker
Dark Cosmos Seminar - Machine Learning for Neutrino Cross Section Modeling - Joseph Henry - 4 PM
Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 4:00 pm5:30 pm

Cross-section predictions are crucial for the success of long-baseline neutrino experiments, but they suffer from significant theoretical uncertainties. Given the promise of future near detector data, one certainly expects and needs to utilize such data to improve cross-section modeling. We want to explore this idea to its fullest extent by…

Speaker
Dark Cosmos -Simulating Stochastic Gravitational Waves from Early Structure Formation - Joseph Henry - 4 PM
Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:00 pm5:30 pm

Gravitational wave detectors provide a chance to observe the state of the very early universe and have important sensitivities for studies of early universe cosmology and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. In this talk, I will discuss the production of potentially detectable stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds in early matter…

Speaker
Dark Cosmos Seminar - Probing Dark Matter with Pulsar Timing Arrays and Gravitational Wave Detectors - Joseph Henry - 4 PM
Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) and gravitational wave detectors can serve as valuable tools in the detection of dark matter. Dark matter substructure within the Milky Way Galaxy can induce gravitational pulls on pulsars, leading to observable deviations in pulsar timings. We demonstrate that dark matter models predicting enhanced power on small…

Speaker
Exoplanets as Dark Laboratories: New Searches for sub-GeV Dark Matter
Fri, Jun 9, 2023, 11:00 am1:00 pm

I will discuss exoplanets as new targets to discover Dark Matter (DM). Throughout the Milky Way, DM can scatter, become captured, deposit annihilation energy, and increase the heat flow within exoplanets. I will show estimates for infrared telescope sensitivity to this scenario, finding actionable discovery or exclusion searches. Supporting…

Speaker
Faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos - New precision cosmological constraints from CMB lensing with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope|Matthew Madhavacheril|Joseph Henry Rm@4PM
Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope is a ground-based CMB survey that has mapped half the millimeter sky at significantly higher resolution and sensitivity than the Planck satellite. I will present new ACT results from a 9400 sq.deg. gravitational lensing mass map, including constraints on the amplitude of matter fluctuations as well as the Hubble…

Speaker
Physics faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos - Enhancing the early universe from rotating axion field|Dr Nicolas Fernandez|April 11 @4PM
Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 4:00 pm5:30 pm

In this talk, I present a novel scenario in which the unexplored cosmological evolution of the axion field, specifically a rotation in field space, gives rise to the observed dark matter abundance, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, and gravitational waves signatures. This rotation of the axion field provides a natural origin for an era of…

Speaker
Physic faculty, post docs, grads
Dark Cosmos - Molecules For Dark Matter Detection|Ben Lillard - UO, Joseph Henry Rm @4PM
Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Organic scintillators are a promising avenue for the direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter (DM). With eV-scale excitation energies that rival the sensitivity of semiconductor targets, they can be produced in bulk and purified relatively inexpensively. A low-background kilogram-size scintillator target could achieve world-leading sensitivity…

Speaker
Faculty, Postdocs, graduate students
Dark Cosmos | Directly Detecting Light Dark Matter| Robert McGehee (University of Michigan)
Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

While the experimental program to detect ever lighter dark matter is proceeding full steam ahead, the theory of such light, detectable dark matter is at a crossroads. I will detail two examples of sub-GeV hadrophilic dark matter models which these future direct detection endeavors may discover while highlighting the serious challenges model…

Speaker
Faculty, Postdocs, graduate students
Dark Cosmos |High-precision measurement of the W boson mass with the CDF II detector | Bo Jayatilaka (Fermilab)
Tue, Feb 14, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

The mass of the W boson, a mediator of the weak force between elementary particles, is tightly constrained by the symmetries of the standard model of particle physics. The Higgs boson was the last missing component of the model. After observation of the Higgs boson, a measurement of the W boson mass provides a stringent test…

Speakers
Faculty, Postdocs, graduate students
Dark Cosmos - Count your halos
Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

One of the strongest predictions of the standard cold dark matter paradigm is the hierarchy of structure down to Earth-mass scales.  However, individual self-bound clumps of dark matter--"halos"--are difficult to detect directly.  Instead, we use galaxies as lampposts for halos.  By counting galaxies, we can measure the…

Speaker
Faculty, Postdocs, graduate students
Harmonic Analysis of the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background - Kim Boddy - University of Texas
Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 4:00 pm5:30 pm

Abstract: A stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) is expected to be generated from a population of unresolved sources and potentially from early Universe processes. In the nHz band, supermassive black hole binaries generate a SGWB, and there have been hints that a detection of the SGWB by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) may be on the…

Faculty, post docs, grads