Events During the Week of July 24th through July 31st, 2022
Monday, July 25th, 2022
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
- Network in Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) Seminar
- Lattice QCD for nuclear physics (and maybe nuclear astrophysics)
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place:
- Speaker: André Walker-Loud, LBL Berkeley
- Abstract: I will give a quick summary of the current status and challenges of applying lattice QCD to nuclear physics problems, as well as where we hope to be progressing in the next few years. I will give a selective survey of some recent lattice QCD applications to topics in low-energy nuclear physics with possibly some relevance to nuclear astrophysics.
- Host: Baha Balantekin
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
- Physics ∩ ML Seminar
- Minerva: Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models
- Time: 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
- Place: Online Seminar: Please sign up for our mailing list at www.physicsmeetsml.org for zoom link
- Speaker: Guy Gur-Ari, Google Brain
- Abstract: Quantitative reasoning tasks which can involve mathematics, science, and programming are often challenging for machine learning models in general and for language models in particular. We show that transformer-based language models obtain significantly better performance on math and science questions when trained in an unsupervised way on a large, math-focused dataset. Performance can be further improved using prompting and sampling techniques including chain-of-thought and majority voting. Minerva, a model that combines these techniques, achieves SOTA on several math and science benchmarks. I will describe the model, its capabilities and limitations.
- Host: Gary Shiu
- Physics Summer Fun
- Weekly Recess
- Time: 12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: Bascom Hill or 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn
- Abstract: We hope you’ll take a 20-30 minute break on (some/all) Wednesdays this summer (12:30-1pm) to come play together! For nice days, we’ve arranged to borrow some lawn games from the L&S dean’s office and will likely bring along a frisbee and/or a hackeysack, too. Meet us on Bascom Hill (between Birge/South Hall).
In case of rain, we’ll meet indoors (5310 CH) for board games. Feel free to come play or just hang out! - Thesis Defense
- Breeding and bounding intersecting branes
- Time: 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
- Place: 5280 CH
- Speaker: Gregory Loges
- Abstract: Intersecting branes provide a natural framework for constructing four-dimensional theories with semi-realistic particle physics. The phenomenological properties of vacua built in this way vary dramatically, and it is an interesting task to understand both what is possible and what is typical. I will discuss intersecting brane constructions for type IIA string theory on a toroidal orbifold from two perspectives. On one hand, genetic algorithms, which take inspiration from biology, provide a method to optimize desirable properties by "breeding" a population of branes. Generation by generation, random samples are produced and the underlying structure learned. On the other, an exact number of indistinguishable vacua can be found by leveraging the recursive way in which branes are combined. Sharp predictions for moduli, gauge group, etc. can be obtained at the cost of losing detailed information about any one vacuum.
- Host: Gary Shiu
- Thesis Defense
- Breeding and bounding intersecting branes
- Time: 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
- Place: Chamberlin Hall 5280 (also
- Speaker: Gregory Loges, Physics PhD Graduate Student
- Abstract: Intersecting branes provide a natural framework for constructing four-dimensional theories with semi-realistic particle physics. The phenomenological properties of vacua built in this way vary dramatically, and it is an interesting task to understand both what is possible and what is typical. I will discuss intersecting brane constructions for type IIA string theory on a toroidal orbifold from two perspectives. On one hand, genetic algorithms, which take inspiration from nature, provide a method to optimize desirable properties by "breeding" a population of branes. Generation by generation, random samples are produced and the underlying structure learned. On the other, an exact number of indistinguishable vacua can be found by leveraging the recursive way in which branes are combined. Sharp predictions for moduli, gauge group, etc. can be obtained at the cost of losing detailed information about any one vacuum.
- Host: Gary Shiu
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
- No events scheduled
Friday, July 29th, 2022
- No events scheduled