Events on Thursday, February 26th, 2026
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- APS March Meeting Practice Talks
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Students , UW-Madison
- Abstract: Students Presenting: Minyoung Kim, Longyu Ma, Gustav Romare,
Keenan Smith, Dmitry Zverevich - Host: Alex Levchenko
- Preliminary Exam
- Searches for heavy resonances decaying into two Higgs bosons (HH) in the bb tau tau final state using Run 3 data from the CMS experiment.
- Time: 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 5280
- Speaker: Mitanshu Thakore
- Abstract: The talk will focus on searches for heavy resonances decaying into a pair of Higgs bosons predicted by beyond the Standard Model theories. The search targets final states where one Higgs boson decays into a pair of tau leptons and the other into a pair of bottom quarks: X→HH→bb ττ. The analysis uses proton–proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV, collected with the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during Run 3 (2022–2026). These final states are particularly challenging because, for heavy resonances, the Higgs bosons are produced with large Lorentz boosts. As a result, their decay products are separated by a small angle in space and appear highly collimated in the detector. Due to this collimation, a single large-cone (AK8) jet is used to reconstruct the H→bb decay. For the H→ττ decay, the tau-lepton pair is also highly boosted and collimated. Depending on the event topology, the Taus may be reconstructed either within a single large jet or as two isolated tau leptons. The search is performed by scanning the distribution of the reconstructed resonance mass and looking for a local excess in data compared to the background prediction.
- Host: Tulika Bose
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Uncovering the Nature of Active Galactic Nuclei Accretion Disks with Radiation Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations, Machine Learning, and Laboratory Experiments
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Dr. Amy Secunda, Flatiron Institute/CCA
- Abstract: Active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks fuel powerful AGN feedback and are important laboratories for studying accretion physics. Because AGN are generally too distant to resolve spatially, most of what we can learn about their accretion disks comes from studying the variability in AGN light curves. However, many mysteries remain about the source of variability in AGN light curves and what this variability can reveal about the structure, internal physics, and accretion rates of AGN disks. I will show how I use radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations, long baseline AGN light curves, and machine learning tools to improve our understanding of AGN variability and model the structure of AGN disks. I will also briefly discuss my work using laboratory experiments to understand accretion more broadly.
- Host: Nicholas Stone