NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forums |
Organized by: Prof. Lu Lu
Events During the Week of February 5th through February 12th, 2017
Monday, February 6th, 2017
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, February 7th, 2017
- Cosmology with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Daniel Jacobs, Arizona State
- Abstract: Measurements of the distribution of matter on cosmological scales have played a transformational role in our understanding of the standard model revealing that most of the energy of the universe remains unaccounted for by the standard model. Observations of Hydrogen via the highly redshifted 21 cm line trace out the matter distribution on large scales at epochs of cosmic time unreachable by most other methods to give us another cosmological matter tracer. The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array, which is currently under construction will be the first instrument to bring sufficient sensitivity to characterize the 21cm signal and break degeneracies in cosmological measurements to improve several parameters including the sum of the neutrino masses. Much can also be learned about the formation of structure and the very first stars and black holes. Applying the same techniques to nearby frequency bands, arrays like Tienlai in China and CHIME in Canada are working towards better constraints on the dark energy equation of state. The experimental challenge for all is in discriminating faint background from bright foregrounds. To meet this challenge I am building new methods of precision instrument construction, calibration, and analysis methods. In this talk we’ll learn about a couple of these efforts including the development of drone-based calibration and scalable cloud analysis for PB-scale data sets. Finally we'll look briefly to the future where large instruments are being built by the international community and even larger are considered by the US high energy/cosmology community for the next decade.
- Host: Sridhara Dasu
Wednesday, February 8th, 2017
- No events scheduled
Thursday, February 9th, 2017
- Neutrinos: From idea to discovery to precision measurements
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Minerba Betancourt, Fermilab
- Abstract: The discovery of neutrino oscillations opened new windows for the study of neutrino physics. In this talk, I will present the history and importance of neutrino physics, concentrating on neutrinos produced by accelerator. Specifically, I will give an overview of the neutrino physics program at Fermilab and the remaining questions for the neutrino physics. In order to answer the open questions in neutrino physics, it is critical that we understand neutrino interactions and nuclear effects on these interactions extremely well. MINERvA is a neutrino scattering experiment which make precision measurements of cross sections and a studies of nuclear effects. I will present measurements of quasi-elastic scattering, which is one of the largest contributions to the signal of many oscillation experiments.
- Host: Sridhara Dasu
Friday, February 10th, 2017
- No events scheduled