Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of November 9th through November 15th, 2025
Monday, November 10th, 2025
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Title to be announced
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Masayuki Ono, PPPL
- Host: Cary Forest
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- The Galactic Center Excess: what AI/ML is teaching us about a potential dark-matter signal
- Time: 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 5280
- Speaker: Nicholas L. Rodd, LBL, Berkeley
- Abstract: In this talk I will provide an update on the Galactic Center Excess (GCE), a potential signal of dark-matter annihilation discovered in Fermi gamma-ray data sixteen years ago. The leading alternative hypothesis to dark matter is a population of unresolved point sources. I'll review the statistical framework that allows one to distinguish between point sources and dark matter, focussing specifically on where it breaks, and why AI/ML techniques can overcome the issues. The latest AI/ML approaches are pointing back in favor of dark matter, however I'll show that the case is far from resolved and there remain many improvements we can make to shed further light on what yet could be the discovery of dark matter.
- Host: Dan Hooper
Tuesday, November 11th, 2025
- Thesis Defense
- Instability Saturation and Turbulent Dynamos in Shear Flows
- Time: 9:00 am - 11:00 am
- Place: B343 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Bindesh Tripathi
- Abstract: Instabilities in nature drive turbulence, which impedes fusion-energy gain in reactors and impacts cosmic observables such as magnetic fields and multi-messenger-astronomy signals. To understand the underlying turbulent processes, this thesis investigates two central questions: How instabilities may saturate, and how turbulence may generate astrophysical magnetic fields at large scales—a process called the dynamo. Previous efforts to address the former have relied exclusively on an energy cascade to microphysical scales and thus missed critical elements of instability-scale mode-couplings. Dynamo efforts have been frustrated because large-scale magnetic-field generation is suppressed via Alfvénization—a robust magnetohydrodynamic process that aligns fluctuations in the fluid velocity u with those in the magnetic field b, i.e., u||b. Addressing these challenges, this thesis develops fundamental principles of instability saturation and applies them to demonstrate a novel mechanism where Alfvénization generates magnetic fields, instead of suppressing the fields. These findings, organized in three parts, apply to shear flows driven unstable by their velocity gradients.
- Host: Paul Terry
- Black and Brown in Physics
- BBiP Native American Heritage Month Celebration
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: Sterling B343
- Abstract: The Black and Brown in Physics (BBiP) student organization would like to invite you to our celebration of Native American Heritage Month this coming Tuesday, November 11th at 2PM in Sterling B343. We have two amazing speakers lined up for the event! Our first speaker will be Jacqueline Brixey - a postdoctoral researcher from the Information School and Language Sciences at UW-Madison, who will be discussing her research on indigenous and endangered languages, dialogue systems, and bilingualism. And our second speaker will be Mace Bishop, a third-year physics graduate student also from UW-Madison who will be talking about the Choctaw culture and language. We will also be serving some light snacks during the event.
If you are interested in joining the event remotely, you may do so by using the following Zoom link:
We hope that you will join us in supporting our wonderful speakers in our celebration of Native American culture and heritage! - Council Meeting
- Physics Council Meeting
- Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
- Place: 2314 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Kevin Black, UW - Madison
- Host: Kevin Black
Wednesday, November 12th, 2025
- Department Meeting
- Time: 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
- Place: B343 Sterling
- Speaker: Kevin Black, UW-Madison
- Host: Kevin Black
Thursday, November 13th, 2025
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Trimming Quantum Many-body States
- Time: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Hao Zhang, UW-Madison
- Host: Matthew Otten
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Planet-Forming and Photoevaporating Disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster: The View from ALMA and JWST
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Dr. Nick Ballering, Research Scientist at SSI/UW-Madison
- Abstract: The Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) offers the clearest view of protoplanetary disks in a rich cluster, the typical environment for star and planet-formation in the Galaxy. I will present results from high-resolution ALMA observations of over 200 disks in the ONC that reveal their dust masses and sizes, key properties in determining what types of planets can form. I will also highlight images of proplyds—disks in the process of being photoevaporated by the cluster’s harsh radiation field—where ALMA traces free-free emission and radio recombination lines from outflowing ionized gas. I will then turn to the infrared and share recent JWST NIRSpec observations of warm atomic and molecular gas from three ONC proplyds. Finally, I will show how JWST NIRCam observations can reveal the presence of water ice in an edge-on disk seen in silhouette in front of the Orion Nebula.
- Host: Nicholas Stone
Friday, November 14th, 2025
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Title to be announced
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 2241
- Speaker: Jake Covey, University Illinois Ubana-Champaign
- Host: Mark Saffman