College of Arts and Sciences

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Continue reading… Dragan Huterer (U. Michigan)

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Continue reading… Arthur Kosowsky (Pittsburgh)

Cosmology with ACTPol and AdvACT

The bolometric polarimeter at the focal plane of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope allows us to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with high signal-to-noise both in temperature and polarization.  In this talk, I will present the data-reduction pipeline, highlighting the importance of making maximum-likelihood unbiased CMB maps. I will show the two-season ACTPol cosmological results presented in Louis et al. (2017), Sherwin et al. (2017), and Hilton et al. (2017) and describe the current effort to finalize the analysis of the ACTPol dataset. I will conclude with preliminary results from the ongoing AdvACT survey,

Continue reading… Simone Aiola (Princeton)

Title: Amplitudes for massive spinning particles
 Abstract: I will review a method for constructing scattering amplitudes for spinning particles and then discuss how these amplitudes can be used to constrain massive gravity and theories containing higher-spin particles.

Continue reading… James Bonifacio (Oxford and CWRU)

The Standard Cosmological Model: A Status Report

Overall, the standard cosmological model has enjoyed enormous empirical success. But there are  a number of indicators that we might be missing something. These include the large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) “anomalies”, and two to three sigma discrepancies between cosmological parameters derived from larger angular scales of the CMB vs. smaller angular scales, CMB lensing potential reconstruction vs. CMB power spectra, data from the Planck satellite vs. data from the South Pole Telescope, and CMB-calibrated predictions for  the current rate of expansion vs. more direct measurements. I will introduce the standard cosmological model,

Continue reading… Lloyd Knox (UC Davis)

Title: The Surprisingly Complex Lives of Massive Galaxies
 
Abstract: Massive galaxies reside in the densest and most evolved regions of the Universe, yet we are only beginning to understand their formation history. Once thought to be relics of a much earlier epoch, the most massive local galaxies are red and dead ellipticals, with little ongoing star formation or organized rotation. In the last decade, observations of their assumed progenitors have demonstrated that the evolutionary histories of massive galaxies have been far from static. Instead, billions of years ago, massive galaxies were morphologically different: compact, possibly with more disk-like structures,

Continue reading… Rachel Bezanson (Pittsburgh)

The next massive galaxy and quasar frontier at the Cosmic Dawn

Many of the advances in our understanding of cosmic structure have come
from direct computer modeling. In cosmology, we need to develop computer
simulations that cover this vast dynamic range of spatial and time
scales. I will discuss recent progress in cosmological hydrodynamic
simulations of galaxy formation at unprecedented volumes and
resolution. I will focus on predictions for the first quasars and
their host galaxies in the BlueTides simulation.  BlueTides is a
uniquely large volume and high resolution simulation of the high
redshift universe: with 0.7 trillion particles in a volume half a
gigaparsec on a side.

Continue reading… Tiziana Di Matteo (Carnegie Mellon)

Neutrinos: cool, cold, coldest
 
In all of particle physics, neutrinos are some of the most ghostly particles we’ve detected. While the story of their discovery was pretty cool in itself, some modern experiments are even cooler. 
 
The IceCube experiment, located at the geographic South Pole, was originally designed to collect astro-particle data, especially by looking for neutrino point sources as potential sources of the highest energy cosmic rays. But because of its immense fiducial volume, IceCube can collect high-statistic neutrino data, and thus measure oscillation parameters with precision that rivals dedicated oscillation experiments. 
 
The CUORE experiment examines majorana nature of neutrinos by looking for neutrinoless double beta decay in the coldest cubic meter in the Universe,

Continue reading… Laura Gladstone (CWRU)

Giant nonlinear optical responses in Weyl semimetals

Recently Weyl quasi-particles have been observed in transition metal monopnictides (TMMPs) such as TaAs, a class of noncentrosymmetric materials that heretofore received only limited attention. The question that arises now is whether these materials will exhibit novel, enhanced, or technologically applicable properties. The TMMPs are polar metals, a rare subset of inversion- breaking crystals that would allow spontaneous polarization, were it not screened by conduction electrons. Despite the absence of spontaneous polarization, polar metals can exhibit other signatures, most notably second-order nonlinear optical polarizability, leading to phenomena such as second-harmonic generation (SHG).

Continue reading… Liang Wu, University California Berkeley, MPPL2,Giant nonlinear optical responses in Weyl semimetals

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Continue reading… Gabriela Marques, National Observatory of Rio de Janeiro and CWRU