Events During the Week of May 19th through May 26th, 2024
Sunday, May 19th, 2024
- Academic Calendar
- Faculty contract year ends
- Abstract: *Note: actual end time may vary.* URL:
Monday, May 20th, 2024
- Academic Calendar
- 4-week summer session begins
- Abstract: *Note: actual end time may vary.*
Tuesday, May 21st, 2024
- Network in Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) Seminar
- Asteroseismology: diving deep into stars
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: Join Zoom Meeting Meeting ID: 912 3071 4547
- Speaker: Prof. Conny Aerts , KU Leuven, Radboud University, and MPIA
- Abstract: Asteroseismology has been bringing breakthrough science since more than a decade now. In this webinar, 2022 Kavli and 2024 Crafoord laureate Conny Aerts will introduce the basic principles of asteroseismology and explain its capacity to probe stellar interiors. It will be shown how applications to sun-like stars and red giants feed exoplanetary and galactic science. We also cover recent applications to stars rotating much faster than the Sun. We discuss how gravito-inertial asteroseismology offers to estimate the internal rotation and chemical mixing deep inside stars, with major implications for stellar evolution. We end with exciting future opportunities for this booming research field of astrophysics.
- Host: Baha Balantekin
- Wisconsin Quantum Institute
- Quantum Coffee Hour
- Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
- Place: Rm.5294, Chamberlin Hall
- Abstract: Please join us for the WQI Quantum Coffee today at 3PM in the Physics Faculty Lounge (Rm.5294 in Chamberlin Hall). This series, which takes place approximately every other Tuesday, aims to foster a casual and collaborative atmosphere where faculty, post-docs, students, and anyone with an interest in quantum information sciences can come together. There will be coffee and treats.
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024
- Summer Recess
- Time: 12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: Bascom Hill outside Birge
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn
- Abstract: Come take a break and play from 12:30-1 on Bascom Hill (outside of Birge)! Some of us will be walking up, leaving from the courtyard between Chamberlin and Sterling ~12:25 – feel free to walk with us!
Cornhole, ladder toss, frisbee, juice boxes. . . .
Hope you’ll join us! Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
- NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
- New Prospects for Probing Dark Matter with High-Energy Cosmic Observations
- Time: 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
- Place: Supernova, WIPAC
- Speaker: Qinrui Liu, Queen's University, Canada
- Abstract: Detecting cosmic messengers produced by the annihilation/decay of dark matter (DM) gravitationally concentrated in the halo of galaxies and heavy celestial objects has been a major focus for indirect DM searches. In parallel with the search for general signals from the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), alternative DM models can also be searched for with astronomical messengers. In this talk, I will discuss neutrino and gamma-ray signals for inelastic DM annihilating outside neutron stars and probing heavy asymmetric DM whose decay leads to an asymmetry of particle and antiparticle signals with the Glashow resonance. I will conclude with a brief discussion on the prospect of direct detection of the interaction of the cosmic ray-boosted DM in a neutrino telescope.
- Host: Francis Halzen
Friday, May 24th, 2024
- Thesis Defense
- Measurement of the Neutrino Mass Ordering with IceCube DeepCore
- Time: 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
- Place: B343 Sterling or
- Speaker: Maria Prado Rodriguez, Physics Graduate Student
- Abstract: Although the Standard Model is our current best theory for describing the building blocks of the universe, there are still several important questions that it does not answer. Some of these include: How does gravity, dark matter, and dark energy fit into the Standard Model? Why is the universe made up of more matter than anti-matter? More importantly for this work, the Standard Model predicts that neutrinos should be massless particles. However, with the discovery of neutrino oscillations, it was confirmed that neutrinos actually have non-zero mass. But why does this happen? To be able to answer this question, the ordering of the neutrino masses became a crucial piece of the puzzle as all of the possible testable theories depend greatly on whether the mass ordering is normal (m3>m2>m1) or inverted (m2>m1>m3). IceCube is an ice-Cherenkov neutrino detector deployed about 1.5 kilometers below the surface of the South Pole. Using DeepCore, a more densely instrumented volume of ice near the bottom of the detector, this work studies the mass ordering through a measurement of the oscillation patterns of a 9.28-year sample of atmospheric neutrinos using a frequentist statistical analysis. The main goal of this work is to provide a valuable contribution to help resolve the mass ordering question as this measurement would be completely independent of the parameter currently creating a tension for existing results by other experiments. Another goal is to serve as a high-energy complement to existing measurements as these have been generated using neutrinos at lower energies.
- Host: Francis Halzen