Yuhsin Tsai (Maryland) Title: Probing dark showers at the LHCb
Title: Probing dark showers at the LHCb Dark shower is a generic feature of the Hidden Valley (HV) model, which produces bound states with a high multiplicity, low masses, and long lifetimes. The showering process can arise, for example, in Neutral Naturalness models, or in dark matter scenarios that explain the possible signal of galactic center gamma-ray. A collider search … Read More
Thomas Dumitrescu (Harvard University) “New Tools for Exploring Strongly Coupled Quantum Field Theories”– * special location: 3 Le Conte Hall
Abstract: “I will review some recent progress in analyzing strongly coupled quantum field theories, focusing on theories with supersymmetry. In addition to their role in particle physics, supersymmetric theories are an ideal theoretical laboratory for deepening our understanding of quantum field theory and the diverse phenomena it describes. I will showcase a selection of new tools that have been developed … Read More
Erik Verlinde (Amsterdam) “From Emergent Gravity to Dark Energy and Dark Matter”
There are strong indications that Einstein gravity can be derived from a microscopic description of emergent spacetime in terms of entangled quantum information. An essential ingredient in the derivation is of the Einstein equations is that the entanglement entropy of the vacuum obeys an area law. In Anti-de-Sitter space this condition is known to hold due to the work of … Read More
Ryuichiro Kitano (KEK) – “Strong CP problem and axion on the lattice”
In QCD, while the phase in the quark masses are physical through the axial anomaly, it must be extremely small to be consistent with the measurement of the electric dipole moment of the neutron. We review and discuss this mystery, called the strong CP problem, and present an approach from the lattice QCD. Especially, we discuss the temperature dependence of … Read More
Valerie Domcke (APC Paris) “Probing the early Universe with gravitational waves”
Abstract: Gravitational waves are unique messengers to explore the very early universe, probing energy ranges far beyond the reach of photon or even neutrino astronomy. The holy grail in this context is the stochastic gravitational wave background of cosmic inflation, which would shed light on the microphysics of inflation as well as on the entire subsequent cosmological history. In the … Read More
Spring Break – no seminar
Can Kilic (UT Austin) “Flavored Dark Matter and a Secret Asymmetry”
Tao Han (Pittsburgh) “Unblinding the dark matter blind spots”
Abstract: The dark matter (DM) blind spots in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) refer to the parameter regions where the couplings of the DM particles to the Z-boson or the Higgs boson are almost zero, leading to vanishingly small signals for the DM direct detections. We carry out comprehensive analyses for the DM searches under the blind-spot scenarios in … Read More
Isabel Garcia Garcia (Oxford) “The String Soundscape at Gravitational Wave Detectors”
In this talk, we explore the possibility of gravitational wave production due to ultra-relativistic bubble wall collisions. This occurs due to a process of post-inflationary vacuum decay that takes place via quantum tunnelling within a warped throat (of Randall-Sundrum type). We emphasise the differences between vacuum decay via quantum tunnelling, and a thermal first order phase transition, and how potential … Read More