|
|
 |
Events During the Week of
January 20th through January 26th, 2013
Monday, January 21st, 2013
No events scheduled
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013
Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
The Minus-1st Law: The conservation of information and how it leads to chaos
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: George Hrabovsky, Madison Area Science and Technology
- Abstract: The conservation of information is central to all of physics. It also seems so obvious to us physicists that we don't talk about it much in courses. It is a simple idea, the quantity of information in a closed system never changes. This simple idea requires us to think deeply about the nature of dynamical systems. The ramifications are dramatic; it leads to the second law of thermodynamics and to chaos.
- Host: Sprott
- Add this event to your calendar
"Physics Today" Undergrad Colloquium (Physics 301)
The Higgs Boson
- Time: 1:20 pm
- Place: 2223 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Wesley Smith, University of Wisconsin Department of Physics
- Abstract: A series of weekly presentations and discussions of current research topics in physics by the scientists involved in those studies designed to expose students to the topics and excitement of the research frontier.
- Add this event to your calendar
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
XENON100
- Time: 2:30 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Kyungeun Lim, Columbia University
- Host: Reina Maruyama
- Add this event to your calendar
Thursday, January 24th, 2013
NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
AGN as Multi-Messenger Probes of the High-Energy Universe: Observations with the HAWC Observatory
- Time: 2:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Asif Imran, Los Alamos National Lab
- Abstract: Ground-based gamma-ray observatories have opened up a new window into the high-energy universe. To date, exciting results reported by experiments such as VERITAS, H.E.S.S., and Milagro include the the detection of photons from nearly 50 relativistic AGN jets at TeV energies. However, the picture of the universe beyond 1 TeV is far from complete. The origin and composition of the extra-galactic ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECR) remains a central problems in astrophysics. Based on energy considerations, recent studies have argued that highly relativistic jets in AGNs are the best candidates for the sites of UHECR acceleration. Consequently, we may be able to observe >20 TeV emission from nearby AGN contrary to conventional models that predict significant attenuations of the source gamma-ray photons via the diffuse extragalactic background light. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory, a next-generation ground-based particle shower detector will be sensitive to photon energies from 50 GeV to 100 TeV with angular resolution of 0.3 degrees at E> 1 TeV. HAWC's high duty cycle (~100%) and wide field of view (~2 sr) is ideal to test AGN as possible sites for the acceleration of UHECR. Furthermore, HAWC's observations of an orphan flare from AGN coupled with the detection of coincident neutrinos by the IceCube observatory with allow us to independently probe the acceleration of UHECR in AGN.
In this talk, I will give an overview of the mechanism for the production of high energy photons from UHECR-induced cascade emission along with an update on the current status of the HAWC observatory. I'll also present the sensitivity of the HAWC detector to TeV emission from AGN.
- Host: Westerhoff
- Add this event to your calendar
WIPAC Seminar
Exploring Fundamental Physics with the Cosmic Microwave Background: New Results from the South Pole Telescope
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Bradford Benson, University of Chicago
- Abstract: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is revolutionizing our understanding of the Universe. The CMB is the most powerful piece of evidence that we live in a geometrically flat Universe, dominated by non-baryonic cold dark matter and dark energy. Even with this basic cosmological model established, there are still many outstanding questions: What is dark energy? What are the neutrino masses? Are there missing standard model particles that we can detect cosmologically? Did Inflation happen, and what physics was responsible for it? The CMB remarkably is imprinted with information regarding each of these questions. In addition, the mm-wave CMB data is opening a new window into the extragalactic sky, simultaneously providing large catalogs of massive galaxy clusters, high-redshift lensed galaxies, and other mm-wave bright sources. I will present recent results from the South Pole Telescope, a 10-meter mm-wavelength telescope which recently completed a survey of 2500 sq. deg. of the sky with unprecedented depth and angular resolution. In particular, I will highlight SPT measurements of the CMB power spectrum, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich galaxy cluster catalog, and the cosmological implications of the SPT data, including its constraints on dark energy, the sum of the neutrino masses, and the number of relativistic particle species.
Note: this is a joint WIPAC Seminar - Astronomy Colloquium.
- Host: Naoko Kurahashi Neilson
- Add this event to your calendar
Friday, January 25th, 2013
Cosmology Journal Club
An Informal discussion about a broad variety of arXiv papers related to Cosmology
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Place: 5242 Chamberlin Hall
- Abstract: Please visit the following link for more details:
http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/journal/index.html
Please feel free to bring your lunch!
If you have questions or comments about this journal club, would like to propose a topic or volunteer to introduce a paper, please email Le Zhang (lzhang263@wisc.edu)
- Host: Peter Timbie
- Add this event to your calendar
Physics Department Colloquium
Quantum coherence in biology
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (coffee at 4:30 pm)
- Speaker: K. Birgitta Whaley, University of California, Berkeley
- Host: Gilbert
- Add this event to your calendar
|
| |
