Nicolas Fernandez (UC Santa Cruz) “Primordial versus stellar: distinguishing black hole populations using the spin distribution of merger events observed by LIGO-Virgo.”
The recent discovery of gravitational waves from five binary black hole (BBH) mergers has given us a new way to study our universe. The origin of the black hole (BH) binaries remains unclear. In this talk, I discuss how the BH spin distribution may help us distinguish between primordial or stellar origins. Primordial black holes (PBHs) may have formed due … Read More
David Dunsky (UC Berkeley) “CHAMP Cosmic Rays”
Abstract: We study interactions of cosmological relics, X, of mass m and electric charge qe in the galaxy, including thermalization with the interstellar medium, diffusion through inhomogeneous magnetic fields and Fermi acceleration by supernova shock waves. We find that for m < 10^10 q GeV, there is a large flux of accelerated X in the disk today, with a momentum … Read More
Vijay Narayan (UCB) “Axion production and detection using superconducting RF cavities”
Chien-I Chiang (UC Berkeley) “Swampland Conjectures and Their Phenomenological Implications”
Abstract: Swampland conjectures are proposed criteria to determine if a seemingly consistent low energy effective field theory can be UV-completed into a consistent theory of quantum gravity. In this talk I will give a brief overview of some of these conjectures, and then discuss their phenomenological implications for current accelerating expansion of the universe.
Simon Knapen (IAS) “The soft frontier at the LHC”
As the LHC transitions to its luminosity driven phase, its sensitivity to high energy signals from beyond the standard model will increase much more slowly than in the past. For soft signatures on the other hand, large, qualitative improvements can be made both with the existing detectors, as well as with future upgrades. I will discuss a few examples related … Read More
Dean Robinson (Santa Cruz/LBNL) “Sterile Neutrinos from Heavy Flavor Anomalies”
Signals of lepton flavor universality violation are currently observed in semi-tauonic B decays at approximately the 4 sigma level compared to theoretically clean Standard Model (SM) predictions. I’ll discuss the possibility that the semi-tauonic decay involves a sterile, right-handed neutrino, rather than a left-handed SM one, permitting simpler UV complete explanations with relaxed constraints. I’ll survey the space of possible … Read More
Christian Bauer (UCB/LBNL) “A quantum algorithm for high energy physics simulationsâ
Surjeet Rajendran (UCB) “Firewalls in General Relativity”
Abstract: We present spherically symmetric solutions to Einsteinâs equations, which are equivalent to canonical Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom black holes on the exterior, but with singular (Planck-density) shells at their respective event and inner horizons. The locally measured mass of the shell and the singularity are much larger than the asymptotic Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass. The area of the shell is equal to … Read More