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Events During the Week of February 14th through February 21st, 2016
Sunday, February 14th, 2016: Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 1:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar; Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 4:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar
Monday, February 15th, 2016: R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar; The Emergent Collective Behavior of Bacteria Under Stress; Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm; Place: 1003 Engineering Centers Building (Tong Auditorium); Speaker: Robert Austin, Princeton; Abstract: Outside the ivied halls of the academy, Darwinian evolution and competition puts an enormous selection pressure on organisms. Although physicists tend to think of bacteria as being rather simple entities living rather solitary and brief lives, our experience has been that under high stress complex environments and at high concentrations they initiate complex, cryptic signaling and information exchange whose purposes we at this point can only guess at. I’ll present experiments showing the complexity of the signals that bacteria exchange under stress, and try to provide some sort of a model to understand the purposes of this emergent collective behavior.; Host: Susan Coppersmith; Add this event to your calendar; Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar; Sustainment of a field reversed configuration with high power neutral beam injection; Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm; Place: 1153 Mechanical Engineering; Speaker: Dr. Richard Magee, Tri-Alpha; Abstract: In the C-2 field reversed configuration (FRC) experiment, tangential neutral beam injection coupled with electrically-biased plasma guns, magnetic end plugs, and advanced surface conditioning led to dramatic reductions in turbulence driven losses and greatly improved plasma stability. Under such conditions, highly reproducible, macroscopically stable FRCs with a significant fast ion population and total plasma temperature of 1keV were achieved. In order to sustain the FRC, the C-2 device was recently upgraded with a new neutral beam injection (NBI) system, which increased the injected neutral power from 4 MW to 10+ MW, by far the largest ever used in a compact toroidal plasma experiment. The upgraded neutral beams produce a fast ion population that has a dramatic beneficial impact and allows the configuration to persist for time significantly longer (5+ ms) than all characteristic plasma decay times. The presentation with provide an overview of the C-2U device and recent experimental results, with a focus on the diagnosis of the fast ion population
and observations of benign fast ion driven collective effects.; Host: UW Madison; Add this event to your calendar
Tuesday, February 16th, 2016: Astronomy Colloquium; Compact Neutron Star Binary Assembly n the Universe; Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm; Place: 4421 Sterling Hall, SPECIAL LUNCH TALK; Speaker: Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, UC Santa Cruz; Abstract: The existence of a population of compact neutron star binaries serves as a unique probe of general relativity and of binary stellar evolution. Mergers of neutron star binaries are promising sources for the detection of gravitational radiation. Yet, to inspiral and merge in less than a Hubble time, a compact binary must be separated by less than the radii of its main sequence progenitors. To reach their current small separations, these binaries must have passed through a common envelope phase. Reconciling the observed distribution of neutron star masses in binaries with theories of accretion during common envelope has posed a long-standing problem. This talk explores the hydrodynamics of common envelope with the goal of reconciling theories for the formation of neutron stars in close binaries with the narrow observed distribution of neutron star masses. ; Host: Professor D'Onghia; Add this event to your calendar; Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar; The dynamics of message-carrying between combatants; Time: 12:05 pm - 1:00 pm; Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall (Refreshments will be served); Speaker: Joe Elder, UW Department of Sociology; Abstract: Combatants have sometimes tried to communicate with each other through neutral channels such as Quakers. This presentation will analyze Quaker message-carrying efforts between combatants in India, Pakistan, Korea, and Sri Lanka, highlighting the limitations, possibilities, and risks of such message carrying. ; Host: Sprott; Add this event to your calendar; Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology); The Unnatural (or Split) Composite Higgs; Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm; Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Tony Gherghetta, University of Minnesota; Abstract:
A simple way to trivially satisfy precision-electroweak and flavor constraints in composite Higgs models is to require a large global symmetry breaking scale, f > 10 TeV. This leads to a tuning of order 10^-4 to obtain the observed Higgs mass, but gives rise to a 'split' spectrum where the strong-sector resonances with masses greater than 10 TeV are separated from the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons, which remain near the electroweak scale. To preserve gauge-coupling unification (due to a composite top quark), the symmetry breaking scale satisfies an upper bound f < 100-1000 TeV, which implies that the resonances are not arbitrarily heavy and may be accessible at future colliders. Furthermore, by identifying dark matter with a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson, the smallest coset space containing a stable, scalar singlet and an unbroken SU(5) symmetry is SU(7) / SU(6) x U(1). Interestingly, this coset space also contains a metastable color-triplet pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson that can decay via a displaced vertex when produced at colliders, leading to a distinctive signal of unnaturalness.; Host: Yang Bai; Add this event to your calendar
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016: Department Meeting; Time: 12:15 pm; Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall; Add this event to your calendar; NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum; Initial Results from HAWC on Gamma-Ray Bursts; Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm; Place: 5280 Chamberlin; Speaker: Joshua Wood, University of Maryland; Abstract: The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a new ground-based TeV gamma-ray observatory operating in the high mountains of Mexico that is giving us a unique view of the high-energy sky. Its high sensitivity, wide field of view (~2 sr), and >95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for discovering gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission at ~100 GeV. Such a discovery would provide key information about the origins of prompt GRB emission as well as constraints on extragalactic background light models and the violation of Lorentz invariance. In this talk we will review HAWC performance and present results concentrating on our initial search for very high energy gamma-ray emission from GRBs with significant sensitivity to short transients with energies as small as 50 GeV.; Host: Stefan Westerhoff; Add this event to your calendar
Thursday, February 18th, 2016: Astronomy Colloquium; New Tools for Galactic Archaeology from the Milky Way; Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm; Place: 4421 Sterling Hall, Coffee and Cookies at 3:15 PM; Speaker: Gail Zasowski, Johns Hopkins University; Abstract: One of the critical components for understanding galaxy evolution is understanding the Milky Way Galaxy itself -- its detailed structure and chemodynamical properties, as well as fundamental stellar physics, which we can only study in great detail locally. This field is currently undergoing a dramatic expansion towards the kinds of large-scale statistical analyses long used by the extragalactic and other communities, thanks in part to an enormous influx of data from space- and ground-based surveys. I will describe the Milky Way and Local Group in the context of general galaxy evolution and highlight some recent developments in Galactic astrophysics that take advantage of these big data sets and analysis techniques. In particular, I will focus on two diverse approaches: one to characterize the distribution and dynamics of the carbon-rich, dusty diffuse ISM, and one to map the resolved bulk stellar properties of the inner disk and bulge. The rapid progress in these areas promises to continue, with the advent of coming data sets from missions like SDSS-IV, Gaia, and LSST. ; Host: Prof Matt Bershday; Add this event to your calendar
Friday, February 19th, 2016: Physics Department Colloquium; Searching for Dark Matter with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices; Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm; Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Kent Irwin, Stanford/SLAC; Abstract: For several decades, Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) have played an important role in searching for the mysterious dark matter that makes up about 85% of the matter in the universe. SQUIDs have been used in both direct searches for dark matter and in CMB experiments used to constrain the dark matter annihilation cross section. I describe the historical role that SQUIDs have played in direct-detection WIMP experiments, CMB dark-matter detection experiments, and more recently in searches for pseudoscalar axion dark matter. I then describe an experiment that we are now constructing to search for ultralight vector-boson dark matter ("hidden photons") with a lumped-element resonator, essentially a radio for dark matter detection. In its ultimate implementation, this experimental campaign will ultimately exclude or detect hidden-photon dark matter over six orders of magnitude in coupling - down to mixing angles of 10^-17 - and nine orders of magnitude in mass (from 100 Hz to 700 GHz). I describe the design of this experiment and challenges to achieving its ultimate science reach.; Host: Kam Arnold; Add this event to your calendar
Saturday, February 20th, 2016: 9th Annual Physics Fair; Time: 11:00 am - 4:00 pm; Place: University Avenue Lobby; Abstract: - Physics Fair Exhibits open (11:00 am – 4:00 pm)
- Research laboratory tours will be given throughout the day
- Ingersoll Physics Museum open (11:00 am – 4:00 pm); Add this event to your calendar; Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 1:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar; Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 4:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar; Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 7:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar
Sunday, February 21st, 2016: Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 1:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar; Wonders of Physics; The Physics of Superheros; Time: 4:00 pm; Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall; Speaker: Clint Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Add this event to your calendar

Events at Physics

Events During the Week of February 14th through February 21st, 2016