Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of November 15th through November 21st, 2015
Monday, November 16th, 2015
- High Energy Seminar
- High Energy Colliders: Past, Present and Future
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Dmitri Denisov, Fermilab
- Abstract: Developments of the particle colliders over last 50 years have seen tremendous progress in both energy of the collisions and intensity of the colliding beams. In order to reach higher collision energy and discover even heavier particles many fundamental inventions in the colliders design have been achieved. Experiments at such colliders required major breakthroughs in the particle detection methods in order to discover all remaining standard model elementary particles: c and t quarks, gluons, tau lepton, W, Z and Higgs bosons. Options for even higher energy colliders than operating today will also be discussed in the talk, including their design parameters, acceleration principles as well as construction challenges. Such colliders is the only way to understanding the Nature at even smaller distances and create particles with even higher masses than we can reach today.
- Host: Wesley Smith
Tuesday, November 17th, 2015
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- The evolution of music from emotional signals
- Time: 12:05 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Charles T. Snowdon, UW Department of Psychology
- Abstract: There have been many attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of music. I will review theories of music origins and take the perspective that music is originally derived from emotional signals in both humans and animals. An evolutionary approach has two components: First, is music adaptive? How does it improve reproductive success? Second, what, if any, are the phylogenetic origins of music? Can we find evidence of music in other species? I will show that music has adaptive value through emotional contagion, social cohesion and improved well-being. I will trace the roots of music through the emotional signals of other species suggesting that the emotional aspects of music have a long evolutionary history. I will show how music and speech are closely interlinked with the musical aspects of speech serving to convey emotional information. I will describe acoustic structures that communicate emotion in music and present evidence that these acoustic structures are widespread among different human cultures and also that similar strictures function to induce emotions in animals. Similar acoustic structures are present in the emotional signals of nonhuman animals. I will conclude with a discussion of music designed specifically to induce emotional states in animals, both cotton top tamarin monkeys and domestic cats.
- Host: Sprott
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Superfluid Dark Matter
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Lasha Berezhiani, Princeton University
- Abstract: I will talk about a novel theory of dark matter superfluidity that matches the success of LCDM model on cosmological scales while simultaneously reproducing the MOND phenomenology on galactic scales.
- Host: Amol Upadhye
Wednesday, November 18th, 2015
- No events scheduled
Thursday, November 19th, 2015
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Physical Review B: An inside look
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: Chamberlin 5310
- Speaker: Victor Vakaryuk, APS Physical Review B
- Abstract: PRB is the largest journal in all of physics and the second largest in all of science. It receives around 10,000 submissions annually which are handled by a team of 10 in-house editors. Being one of them I will give an overview of the journal and its editorial policies and practices in a way it could be useful for the audience of both authors and referees. I will also spend some time talking about other members of Physical Review family such as PRL and recently launched open-access journal PRX.
- Host: Alex Levchenko
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Ejective Feedback and the Gas Around Galaxies
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall, Talk starts at 3:45 PM
- Speaker: Aleks Diamond-Stanic, UW Astronomy Grainger postdoctoral Fellow
- Abstract: Our understanding of galaxy evolution centers around questions of how gas gets into galaxies, how it participates in star formation and black hole growth, and how it is returned to its galactic surroundings via feedback. On a global scale, measurements of the baryon density and the stellar mass function indicate that only 5% of baryons have formed stars by the present day, and this suggests that feedback from massive stars and supermassive black holes must prevent gas from forming stars in both low-mass and high-mass dark matter halos. I will present observational results on the geometry and kinematics of outflowing and inflowing gas around galaxies, including measurements of ejective feedback that is capable of quenching star formation by removing the cold gas supply. These results have broader implications for how gas is consumed and expelled at the centers of massive galaxies and for the limits of feedback from stellar radiation and
supernovae. I will also discuss prospects for characterizing the physical properties of gas in and around galaxies using multi-wavelength spectroscopy with existing and future facilities. - Careers for Physicists
- Physical Review B
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Victor Vakaryuk , Editor at the Physical Review B
- Abstract: Victor is an Editor at the Physical Review B. Students will have an opportunity to learn about alternative career paths within American Physical Society. Students will also have an opportunity to learn in the informal way about editorial policies and practices that could be important for future publications.
- Host: Levchenko
- Graduate Introductory Seminar
- High Energy Experiment
- Time: 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Carlsmith, Dasu, Herndon, Palladino, Pan, Smith, Wu
Friday, November 20th, 2015
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Dark Matter Annihilation in the Gamma-Ray Sky
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (Coffee & Cookies at 3:15pm)
- Speaker: Dan Hooper, University of Chicago/Fermilab
- Abstract: In many models, dark matter particles can undergo self-annihilation, generating gamma-rays and other high-energy particles. One of the missions of the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope is to search for these annihilation products. Over the past several years, Fermi's data has been shown to contain a spatially extended excess of ~1-3 GeV gamma rays from the region surrounding the Galactic Center, consistent with the signal expected from annihilating dark matter. Recent improvements in the analysis techniques have found this excess to be robust and highly statistically significant, with a spectrum, angular distribution, and overall normalization that is in good agreement with that predicted by simple annihilating dark matter models. I will discuss the characteristics of this signal, and ways to test its origin. In particular, the dwarf galaxies recently discovered by DES provide a potently important tool to test a dark matter origin of the Galactic Center excess.
- Host: Francis Halzen