Spring 2019

We all know that humans are causing the globe to warm, at least those of us without a penchant for self deception. But can you explain why, especially to those pesky climate "skeptics"? Well, I have good news for you. In this short, simple talk that a high schooler can understand I'll give you all the scientific know how to show that the greenhouse effect is real, carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, and that humans have greatly increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the past two centuries. I might even cover some ways we can fix it ;)

Not sure about what to do after you get your PhD? If you're uncomfortable with the sacrifices and attrition of shooting for the moon in academia, but you don't want to completely sell out to a private firm, there is a third way. Come find out what your life could look like pursuing a career as a clinical physicist in therapeutic or diagnostic radiation oncology. As a board-certified medical physicist, you would be responsible for treatment planning, clinical research, and quality assurance of various devices for photon, proton, and internal therapy. You will get practical information on what the field is all about, what is hot research-wise, how to make the jump, and the pros/cons of this career track.

The sparking of cut grape hemisphere in a household microwave oven has been an Internet trick for about 2 decades. However, this is not well explained until recently. In this talk, I will go through this funny experiment and a good study from plasma physics.

Azimuthal correlations of particles displaced long distances in pseudo-rapidity is a phenoma of heavy ion collisions well established at both RHIC and the LHC. This is considered a key feature of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a state of deconfined quarks and gluons preserving the initial state nucleon-density fluctuations through to the final state, in contrast with a free streaming hadronic gas. Recently, these long-range correlations were observed in both proton-Pb collisions and high-multiplicity proton-proton collisions, leading some to question whether this is a signature of the QGP at all, or if rather some other mechanism is at work. This talk will explore the long-range correlation phenomena in the context of a search in archived e+e- data from the ALEPH experiment. I promise to keep it short and you get open data at the end.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory played a leading role in neutrino astrophysics, BSM searches, and precision measurements over the past 5 years. I'll go over some of the recent discoveries and measurements and give an idea of what to expect in the next 5 years.

Neutrino flavor oscillations, as first demonstrated by SNO (2001), directly imply non-zero neutrino masses. Despite the large experimental effort put into neutrino oscillations to date, such experiments are sensitive only to mass differences, not their absolute values. Determining the absolute mass scale of the neutrino is a highly non-trivial problem requiring experimental precision into the sub-eV range. Project 8 uses a novel, radiometric approach for determining the mass scale of the neutrino. In this talk, we discuss the current experimental status, as well as the simulation framework used to optimize future phases of the experiment.

There are billions and billions of locks in the world, protecting gym lockers, homes, cars, and everything in between. The defining feature of a lock is that it restricts entry to those who have been given permission by the owner to access it, but how well does this hold up against a mildly determined grad student? Not well actually, in most cases. In this talk I will provide an overview to some of the most commonly encountered locks and access restriction mechanisms that we all deal with on a daily basis, and how such systems are in grave danger of being compromised. Hopefully you will leave the talk with a new set of skills, and/or an idea on how to better protect your belongings. Note: All content is purely educational.

Once a year representatives of the high energy physics community come together and head to Washington, DC, for meetings with congressional offices - to explain why we matter, beg for money and to convince congress that scientists are in fact human. This talk will explain the community's approach to science advocacy, describe the 2019 HEP DC Trip and outline how a meeting with a staffer could go. It will finish up with a chance for you to show off your skills in communicating science!

Javascript is a programming language crucial for web applications. It is particularly useful for making web pages interactive and animated. We can try it to visualize the processes in nuclear and high energy physics, albeit being inaccurate or vague in some cases. This talk will cover attempts to visualize processes in our research using Javascript, in particular the implementation and then some plays with the result [1] for different scenarios such as cloud chamber, particle collisions, and QCD matter. Lastly, some examples will be shown on how we can use this for web pages.

[1] : http://web.mit.edu/tatark/www/hep-vfx/

Topic: High energy physicists have discussed building a future high energy collider. Discuss the science motivation and possible designs of one or more of such proposals.

GlueX is an experiment at Hall D of Jefferson Lab. Its primary goal is to search for and study the spectrum of exotic hybrid mesons. A little over two months ago, we had a very productive commissioning run of the experiment’s PID upgrade detector, the DIRC, which is essential to exploit the full potential of the GlueX experiment. In this talk, I'd like to present a selection of topics related to GlueX and DIRC. I will first introduce the physics motivation for the GlueX program and give some perspectives in a broader context. I will then move on to talk about Cherenkov detectors in general (my goal is to make it the level of “all you need to know about Cherenkov radiation/detectors for the oral exam if it’s not your topic or research”) and the DIRC detector in particular. I will then share the story of how we transported the DIRC from California to Virginia and close by showing some preliminary results from the DIRC commissioning run.

Over the past three weeks, I've worked on a global analysis of DIS and QE world data in order to constrain a phenomenological model for the EMC effect. I studied the uncertainty of our model in a Bayesian framework, using Hamiltonian Markov Chain Monte Carlo. In my talk, I’ll mention how we can use this model to make predictions on a variety of different physics of interest. But! Most of my talk, I'll spend time discussing what I learned about statistics, which I think is vital for how we, as scientists, interpret and present our results. I'll go over statistical interference (the great Frequentist vs. Bayesian divide and why I’m drinkig nd DIRC: selected topicsthe koolaid of Bayesianism), Hamiltonian Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and how you too can do a global analysis with your favorite model!