Aurora Ireland (Stanford) “The B-Side of Gravitational Waves: Imprints of Primordial Tensor Perturbations in CMB B-Modes”
Abstract: Primordial sources of gravitational waves (GWs) have traditionally been probed through their contribution to the stochastic GW background, detectable via pulsar timing arrays and ground-based laser interferometers. However, these same tensor perturbations can also leave an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the form of B-mode polarization. While a detection of primordial B-modes has long been regarded as … Read More
Cara Giovanetti (UC Berkeley) “: A hint for new physics from primordial deuterium”
Abstract: Experts have been debating whether the standard cosmology prediction for primordial deuterium agrees with observation, with some finding agreement and others finding a mild tension (~2 sigma). I will show that this disagreement has its roots not in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis theory or nuclear physics experiment, but instead in simple statistics. I will also introduce a new method to … Read More
Zhiquan Sun (UC Berkeley) “Energy Correlators as a probe of Nonperturbative QCD”
Abstract: Energy correlators are a class of cleverly constructed collider observables that provides unique insights into the field theory structure and phenomenology of QCD. In this talk, I study the leading nonperturbative contribution to energy correlators using field theory methods and discuss the universality across event shape observables of such contributions. I show that correctly including the nonperturbative improves our … Read More
Mathieu Kaltschmidt (Universidad de Zaragoza) “Properties of QCD Axion Dark Matter from Cosmological Lattice Simulations”
Abstract: I will present two examples of how cosmological lattice simulations can be used to study the properties of QCD axion dark matter in the early Universe. First, the phenomenology of three variants of the Axion Misalignment mechanism (Standard, Kinetic, and Large Misalignment) will be discussed. It can be shown that non-linearities and the phenomenon of fragmentation depend not only … Read More