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Karl Warburton
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Iowa State University
Machine Learning in Long-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiments
Neutrinos, the most abundant massive particle in the Universe have profoundly influenced its evolution, but are still the least understood fermion in the Standard Model (SM). The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to T. Kajita and A. McDonald following numerous experimental observations of neutrino oscillations, the process by which neutrinos created in one flavor state are observed interacting as different flavor states after traveling a given distance. This colloquium will cover two experiments focused on furthering our understanding of this phenomenon. NOνA is the current flagship long-baseline neutrino experiment in the USA and consists of two functionally identical, finely granulated detectors that are separated by 809 km. The NOνA three flavor neutrino oscillation results presented in June 2020 will be discussed with particular focus given to the impact that machine learning algorithms had increasing the sensitivity of the analysis. These algorithms use topological features for the reconstruction of neutrino interaction flavor and particle identification. The colloquium will conclude with an exploration of how machine learning tools will inform the physics reach of DUNE, a planned long-baseline neutrino experiment, which will begin data-taking in the mid-2020s.
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Deep Medhi
Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering
University of Missouri — Kansas City
Interdisciplinary Science: Connecting Physics,
Computer Science and Statistics with Computer Networking
The image of a black hole from April 2019 was widely
seen by millions of people all over the world. To make
this happen, it transcended traditional boundaries of a
scientific discipline. In this talk, I will discuss
examples such as black hole imaging and Large Hadron
Collider for high energy physics, and connect them with
computer science and statistics, and how computer
networking plays a role.
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Katelin Schutz
Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Making Dark Matter out of Light
Dark matter could be a “thermal-ish” relic
of freeze-in, where the dark matter is produced by
extremely feeble interactions with Standard Model
particles dominantly at low temperatures. In this talk,
I will discuss how sub-MeV dark matter can be made
through freeze-in, accounting for a dominant channel
where the dark matter gets produced by the decay of
plasmons (photons that have an in-medium mass in the
primordial plasma of our Universe). I will also explain
how the resulting non-thermal dark matter velocity
distribution can impact cosmological observables.
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Mike Wallbank
Physics Department
University of Cincinnati
Searching for Sterile Neutrinos using Antineutrino Oscillations with the NOνA Experiment
The NOνA experiment consists of two functionally
identical liquid scintillator detectors to study
neutrino oscillations over an 810 km baseline using
Fermilab's NuMI neutrino beam. In additional to world-
leading studies of oscillations between the three known
neutrino flavors, NOνA is searching for evidence of
oscillations involving an additional, sterile,
neutrino. Despite observations of neutrino oscillations
from the majority of experiments being consistent with
a 3-neutrino mixing framework, results from LSND and
MiniBooNE are incompatible with this model but could be
explained by incorporating a sterile neutrino state.
These intriguing results are not conclusive and are in
tension with findings from other short-baseline and
long-baseline experiments.
I will describe the NOνA experiment and show the
latest oscillation results, including a novel sterile
search using antineutrinos, and discuss the allowed
limits on the mixing angles governing the
oscillations. I will also talk about future
improvements to the oscillation analyses, in particular
highlighting an ongoing test beam program designed to
improve our understanding of the detectors and allow
more precise analyses through a reduction of the
uncertainties.
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Carl Herickhoff
Biomedical Engineering
University of Memphis
New Directions in Ultrasound Imaging Technology
Ultrasound has become an established clinical imaging
tool in recent decades due to its speed, safety,
affordability, and portability, yet biomedical
ultrasound technology continues to rapidly advance in
new and exciting ways. This talk will give an
introduction to ultrasound imaging systems and devices,
while also highlighting some current fundamental and
applied ultrasound research efforts: intravascular
elasticity imaging, dual-frequency superharmonic
contrast imaging, large-scale body scanner arrays,
low-cost freehand 3D imaging, and integration with
augmented-reality displays for live ultrasound image
guidance.
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Umberto Tamponi
Particle Physics Group
INFN — Torino and the University of Mississippi
Bottomonium at the Super-B factories: QCD and new physics
In the last 15 years, several experiments contributed
to an explosion of new results on heavy QCD bound
states. Today, we potentially stand at the beginning of
a new wave of discoveries, with the Belle II experiment
starting its data taking, BESIII moving forward into
its program and the LHC experiments moving into their
next phase. These new experiments, collecting much
larger statistics, will not only allow to constrain the
low energy QCD models, but also to study rare decays
sensitive to new physics scenarios.
In this seminar, I will first outline the basic ideas
and the status of the bottomonium physics, and then
describe more in detail the potential of the
measurement that will be performed at the Belle II
experiment, ranging from the spectroscopy of the
tetraquark-like states to the study of New-physics
signatures in rare and forbidden decays.
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Eugenio Bianchi
Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos
Pennsylvania State University
Quantum Aspects of Black Hole Physics
I will discuss recent developments in black hole
physics that are at the frontier of gravity, quantum
field theory and quantum information. In particular I
will discuss how thermal properties of black holes
arise from energy eigenstates of the gravitational
field in a manner similar to what happens in other
isolated many-body quantum systems. I will also
highlight how the observation of the statistical
distribution of the spin of primordial black holes can
provide the first observational test of black hole
entropy.
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Wanwei Wu
Neutrino Division
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers for Neutrino Physics
As the most abundant massive particles in our universe,
neutrinos are elusive and provide a promising window to
probe the fundamental physics. They are everywhere but
almost never interact with matter. Questions about the
nature of neutrinos and whether they are the reason
that universe is made of matter rather than antimatter are still unanswered. One promising detector technology
that can be used to study neutrinos in detail is the
liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC), which
has been adopted by many accelerator-based neutrino
experiments including the Fermilab Short-Baseline
Neutrino program and the Deep Underground Neutrino
Experiment. LArTPCs promise to have millimeter-scale
spatial resolution and excellent calorimetric
capabilities in the detection of particles traversing
the liquid argon and the measurement of their
properties. In this talk, the landscape of LArTPCs for
neutrino physics will be discussed, along with the
prospects and status of the LArTPC neutrino experiments
at Fermilab.
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Lan Quynh Nguyen
Department of Physics
University of Notre Dame
Self Interacting Dark Matter and the Small-Scale Structure Problem
The core-cusp problem remains as a challenging
discrepancy between observations and simulations in the
standard CDM model for the formation of galaxies. The
problem is that CDM simulations predict a steep
power-law mass density profile at the center of
galactic dark matter halos. However, observations of
dwarf galaxies in the Local Group reveal a density
profile consistent with a nearly flat distribution of
dark matter near the center. A number of solutions to
this dilemma have been proposed. Here, we summarize
investigations into the possibility that the dark
matter particles themselves self-interact and scatter.
Such self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) particles can
smooth out the dark-matter profile in high-density
regions. We also review the theoretical proposal that
self-interacting dark matter may arise as an additional
Higgs scalar in the 3-3-1 extension of the standard
model. We present new simulations of galaxy formation
and evolution for this formulation of self-interacting
dark matter. Current constraints on this
self-interacting dark matter are then summarized.
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Rachel Rosen
Department of Physics
Columbia University
Gravity Meets Particle Physics
Many of the most pressing open questions in fundamental
physics today require a better understanding of the
interplay between gravity and particle physics. In
this talk, I will review what we learn by treating
gravity as a theory of particle physics: what new
theories emerge, what constraints they must obey, and
what we might learn about gravitational phenomena such
as black holes.
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Christopher Berry
Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in
Astrophysics
Northwestern University
The Secret Lives of Black Holes
Gravitational-wave astronomy provides a unique insight
into the lives of black holes. Since the beginning of
the advanced-detector era in September 2015, we have
observed gravitational waves from over 40 binary black
hole systems. From the measured gravitational-wave
signal we can infer the properties of their source
systems, and uncover new insights into their formation.
There are currently many mysteries around how massive
stars evolve and binaries form in order to create the
population of binary black holes. I will explain how we
can use the growing catalogue of gravitational-wave
observations to unravel these mysteries and review our
discoveries to date.
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Paul Elmore
Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University — Applied
Physics Laboratory and the KTY Group & The Physics
Career from the Mid-Career Perspective
This talk, intended for both undergraduate and graduate
students, is dual purpose. The first part is a short
recruitment talk on Johns Hopkins University —
Applied Physics Laboratory and the Acoustics and
Electromagnetics Group. The laboratory and group employ
physics graduates at the Bachelor's, Master's and
Ph.D. levels. The second part of this talk is centered
on general advice for a career in physics. I will use
my personal career path as an illustration of what, in
my opinion (which is admittedly biased), are the
biggest advantages of being a physicist vs an engineer
or specialized physical scientist. These advantages are
A. Being a “generalist” in the
physical sciences, which can provide flexibility in job
opportunities and specialization choices in your early
career
B. Formal training and general capability to solve
hard analytic problems
There are trade-offs, of course (e.g., lack of
specialization for jobs that require it, lack of
training in engineering approaches, etc.), but the
advantages can outweigh the trade-offs. In addition,
this talk will provide some discussion for the
following topics and time for Q&A:
- Whether or not to get your Ph.D. or perhaps enter
the workforce at the Bachelor's or Master's
degree level.
- The importance of publications and in structuring
your publication for readability and information
flow in order to enhance potential citation count.
- The importance of public speaking and going to
conferences.
- A few bits of career “self-care” advice.
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Meghna Bhattacharya
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi
First Results from the Muon g-2 Experiment at
Fermilab — Muons Leading the Way
The first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at
Fermilab will be presented in this talk. The latest
result from the Fermilab confirms the discrepancy
between the theoretical prediction and the experimental
measurement earlier reported by the Brookhaven
experiment. The aim of the Fermilab experiment is to
measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon,
aμ = (g-2)/2, to a
groundbreaking precision of 140 ppb, obtaining a near
four-fold increase in precision over BNL. This is an
incredibly challenging experiment with a unique
opportunity to provide new insight into nature. An
overview of this ultra-high precision measurement will
be discussed in this talk. |
