Spring 2018

Come hear the ramblings of a grad student who’s fallen way too far down the rabbit hole of trying to choose a font for his thesis. You’ll learn more about fonts (typefaces), font history, and page layout than you ever needed/wanted to know!

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer ice-Cherenkov neutrino detector in the South Pole. It is uniquely sensitive to a telltale sign of a 1-eV sterile neutrino, a hypothetical particle introduced to explain some anomalies observed in the neutrino sector. Searches for sterile neutrinos in IceCube have come up empty, motivating consideration of other scenarios. In this talk, I present the phenomenology of sterile neutrino decay in IceCube and discuss upcoming searches.

IsoDAR at KamLAND will be a search for sterile neutrinos and study of neutrino-electron scattering. This talk will cover: possible physics from IsoDAR experiments, decay-at-rest neutrino sources, high current cyclotrons, hydrogen molecule cation sources, and cave construction.

High precision collider experiments looking for CP violation need the best tracking subsystems money can buy. The Timepix sensor has been studied as a candidate for the tracker component LHCb upgrade. It boasts spatial resolution of a few micrometers, and high efficiency even at the edge of the fiducial area. Other potential applications include medical imaging and x-ray spectroscopy.

The quantum field theory(QFT) is undoubtedly the most preferred language of particle physics. What makes the QFT so special more than a mere scattering theory? In this talk, I would focus on some different aspects of the QFT rather than cross sections and decay rates. I would start with a few examples of constraints for the standard model(SM) from the QFT as a first part. Secondly, I would introduce the effective field theory(EFT) in general and the soft-collinear effective field theory(SCET) being actively used in colliders including the LHC as a specific example of EFT.

Balloons are fun, and they are also useful for particle physics experiments because they can carry our experiments above most of the atmosphere without needing to be launched on an expensive satellite. I will talk about balloons, how we use them, why we use them, how we keep them up, things that can go well, and the stuff that keeps me up at night.

Neutrino-less double beta decay involves two back-to-back single beta decay transitions to various intermediate and highly forbidden nuclear states before the electrons fall down into their final rest states. The modelling of these intermediate states involves incredibly complex calculations due to the many-body nature of the interactions going on inside the nucleus, the results of these calculations are summarized in the so-called nuclear matrix elements. So far there has has been no measurement of these intermediate states and the parameters that govern them. By examining the single-beta decay spectrum of In-115, a 4th order highly forbidden beta decay, we can extract values for the various parameters that go into nuclear matrix calculations thus reducing their uncertainty for heavy nuclei. We will also discuss the implementation of these sorts of physics in the popular imagination and discuss possible pitfalls that should be looked out for.

ABRACADABRA, A Broadband/Resonant Approach to Cosmic Axion Detection with A B-field Ring Apparatus, is an experiment that searches for ultra-light axion and axion-like dark matter in the mass range $10^{-14}-10^{-6}$\,eV. It uses a toroidal magnet to source an oscillating effective electric current from interactions with the axion field. This current is then detected and amplified with a SQUID magnetometer. Axions’ tiny electromagnetic coupling means that the experiment must be highly sensitive and have minimal background noise. This talk will present the current status of the first generation of the experiment, ABRACADABRA-10cm.

GlueX is a detector that recently began taking data at Jefferson laboratories HallD. It's primary Physics motivation is searching for exotic mesons, but it's behavior still needs to be characterized. In this talk, I will present a method for extracting data driven efficiencies and the applicability of bayesian unfolding to this task.

May 4 is Star Wars Day and, in the spirit of the holiday, I will discuss the physics behind this classic science fiction saga. How much of the phenomena and technology in the Star Wars universe can be squared with our current understanding of nature and how much artistic license was taken? At the risk of ruining a time-honored classic, we will examine the feasibility of hyperdrive, lightsabers, Death Stars, and study the nature of the Force with the rigor of a young Padawan. Star Wars cosplay is encouraged

The proton radius puzzle has been a topic attracting not only physicists and also the general public for almost a decade. In this talk, I provide an overview of the puzzle, covering all important experiments related, both from past and in the future.

Many particle physics experiments use light in some form or another. To do Monte-Carlo studies, this necessitates a method for simulating the propagation of light through materials. An entire industry is devoted to this task; for the production of movies, concept images and computer games. What can companies like Pixar teach us about doing physics?