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Faculty Candidate Seminar
The Riddle of the Invisible Universe
Date: Wednesday, February 19th
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Matthew Szydagis, UC Davis
Abstract: The majority of the matter in our Universe does not shine in the form of the stars, nor is it even made up of atoms. This “dark matter” can be probed in experiments here on Earth, where it can scatter off nuclei, albeit rarely. I will discuss different technologies used in the quest for the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), a favorite dark matter candidate. Of special interest are the xenon-based detectors LUX (Large Underground Xenon) and LZ, its multi-ton-scale, next-generation successor. LUX has imposed the world’s strictest limit on the WIMP interaction probability across a wide range of WIMP masses, and disagrees with the potential WIMP detection claims of other experiments. I will also describe a complementary detection technique using small-scale bubble chambers. Lastly, I will present the landscape for the discovery potential for dark matter in the next decade.
Host: Sridhara Dasu/Albrecht Karle
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