Dark matter (DM) annihilating in the Milky Way and beyond may give rise to unique astrophysical signatures. However, these potential signs of new physics are easily confused with standard but poorly understood astrophysical backgrounds, such as populations of dim point sources like millisecond pulsars. I will present a new method to…

A fundamental property of any material is the electron filling, i.e., the number of electrons per unit cell. Within band theory, materials at odd filling must be metals, while those at even filling can be insulators. In the presence of interactions, flux-threading arguments can generalize this constraint, ruling out un-fractionalized…

Berthold Jäck, Matthias Eltschka, Markus Etzkorn, Christian R. Ast, and Klaus Kern In Josephson junctions the Josephson critical current I0 directly relates to the superconducting order parameter Δ [1]. Hence, the combination of the Josephson effect and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (JSTM) has high potential as a local probe for superconductor…

A binary neutron star merger produces gravitational-waves and also electromagnetic transients in multi-wavelenghts. First part of the talk, I will focus on the current status of gravitational waveform modeling for binary neutron star mergers. Using a numerical relativity simulation, we obtain long-term waveforms for several different…

We use a large, statistically well characterised X-ray flux-limited sample of galaxy clusters in the southern hemisphere to study the large-scale structure of the Universe and to probe cosmology out to redshifts of ~ 0.4. We study X-ray superclusters constructed with a strict definition such that they will collapse in the future given…

The final public oral examination of Lucas Parker will take place on Friday, August 7, 2015 at 3:30 pm in Room 202 Jadwin Hall. The examining committee will consist of Professors Page, Pufu and Jones. Any other members of the University wishing to attend the examination may do so.

The AdS/CFT correspondence provides a powerful framework for studying strongly coupled field theories using gravitational techniques. Motivated by possible applications to condensed matter systems many novel classes of black hole solutions have been discovered over the past few years. In this talk, we review progress in understanding of black…

Antiferromagnets are characterized by interactions between spins that favor configurations with nearest neighbors pointing anti-parallel. In some systems, the topology of the spins produces a situation where spins cannot find an orientation that fully satisfies all of the interaction constraints. This is known as geometrical frustration. Such…

The Cosmic Microwave Background continues to provide us with a wealth of information about the universe. I will show new results from the complete Planck satellite mission, which mapped the microwave anisotropy in both temperature and polarization from 2009-13, and describe other recent progress in the field. I will discuss the status of the LCDM…

Our method of nanoscale magnetic sensing and imaging makes use of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers a few nanometers below the surface of a diamond crystal. Using individual NV centers, we perform NMR experiments on single protein molecules, labeled with carbon-13 and deuterium isotopes. In order to achieve single nuclear-spin sensitivity, we…

The invasion of one fluid into another of higher viscosity is unstable and produces complex patterns in a quasi-two dimensional geometry. This viscous-fingering instability,a bedrock of our understanding of pattern formation, has been characterized by a mostunstable wavelength that sets the characteristic width of the fingers. We have shown that…

A new resonance decaying to a pair of vector bosons was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC. In the wake of this discovery a rush of measurements was made to characterize this discovery. The four-lepton final state has been instrumental in both the discovery and characterization of this new particle. With only about…

Abstract: Testing the compatibility of the Higgs boson with mH ~ 125 GeV with the Standard Model predictions is a top priority of the LHC experimental program. Analysis of the WW decay mode of the Higgs boson at ATLAS provides the best single-channel signal strength measurement from Run 1 of the LHC. I will review key recent developments in…

The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an array of natural and enriched high purity germanium detectors that will search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 76-Ge. As part of the MAJORANA research and development efforts, we have deployed a modified, low-background broad energy germanium detector at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility. With…

In this talk I will present results on the preparation and high-resolution imaging of Rydberg many-body systems and the observation of spontaneous emergence of self-organized ordering. In a first series of experiments we investigate the ordering in the post-selected high-excitation-density components of high-temperature many-body states. The…