Past Events

ABSTRACT: The MicroBooNE detector is a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) located on-axis in the  Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermi National Laboratory. One of the primary goals of the experiment is to investigate the excess over background expectations of electromagnetic-like events observed by MiniBooNE at low energies. In this talk, I will present the latest results from MicroBooNe's four analyses, with a focus on the 2-body CCQE search, which utilizes deep learning and traditional techniques. ────────── Troy Cortez …

Ran Itay (SLAC) “MicroBooNE’s New Results from the Deep-Learning-Based  Search for an Electron Neutrino Excess” Read More »

Abstract: The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the first project to be undertaken at the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will be the most comprehensive optical astronomical survey ever undertaken. Starting in 2024, Rubin Observatory will obtain panoramic images covering the sky visible from its location in Chile every clear night for ten years. The resulting hundreds of petabytes of imaging data, essentially a digital color movie of the night sky, will include about 40 billion stars and galaxies, and will be used …

Željko Ivezić (Rubin Observatory/University of Washington) “Cosmology with the Greatest Movie of All Time”  Read More »

ABSTRACT: (This is a Hybrid/ZOOM Meeting) The pursuit of particle physics requires a stable and prosperous society.  Today, our society is increasingly threatened by global climate change.  Human-influenced climate change has already impacted weather patterns, and global warming will only increase unless deep reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are achieved.  Current and future activities in particle physics need to be considered in this context, either on the moral ground that we have a responsibility to leave …

Ken Bloom (UNL) “Climate Impacts of Particle Physics: A Sustainability Agenda” Read More »

Abstract: The elemental abundance patterns of stars encode a wealth of information about the history of the Milky Way galaxy and the astrophysical processesthat create atomic nuclei.  I will describe some of what we have learned about the origin of elements in the Milky Way from the SDSS APOGEE survey, which has measured detailed abundance patterns (typically 15-18 elements per star) for half a million stars.  The average chemical enrichment and the relative contributions from core collapse (massive star) supernovae …

HYBRID TALK | David Weinberg (Ohio State U./Visiting UCB Miller Professor) “Decoding the Origin of the Elements” Read More »

ABSTRACT: Diverse astrophysical and cosmological observations indicate that most of the matter in the Universe is cold, dark and non-baryonic. Traditionally the most popular dark matter candidates have been new elementary particles, such as WIMPs and axions. However Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), black holes formed from over densities in the early Universe, are another possibility. The discovery of gravitational waves from mergers of ~10 Solar mass black hole binaries by LIGO-Virgo has generated a surge in interest in PBH dark …

Anne Green (University of Nottingham) “Primordial Black Holes as a Dark Matter Candidate” Read More »

ABSTRACT: (This is a Hybrid/ZOOM Meeting) The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment was built to measure the smallest neutrino mixing angle, θ₁₃, using the oscillation of electron antineutrinos produced by the Daya Bay nuclear power complex in southern China. Using the rate and spectral shape of antineutrino events at multiple baselines from the reactors, sin²2θ₁₃ is extracted along with the effective mass splitting Δm²ₑₑ. This talk describes, step-by-step, the latest oscillation analysis from our full dataset of ~5.5 million antineutrinos acquired …

Matt Kramer (LBNL) – “Measurement of sin²2θ₁₃ and Δm²ₑₑ from the Full Dataset of the Daya Bay Experiment” Read More »

Abstract: The question of what the identity of dark matter is, presents one of the most fundamental mysteries in physics today. An answer to this question will shed light on a wealth of physics beyond the Standard Model, and will have a fundamental impact on our understanding of the universe from the smallest to the largest scales. A global experimental effort has been ongoing for almost forty years to directly detect dark matter in the laboratory, and devices utilizing liquid …

Hybrid Talk | Aaron Manalaysay (LBNL) “First results from the LZ dark matter search” Read More »

The Physics IDEA Committee has invited Samir Gambhir, Director of the Equity Metrics Program, and Stephen Menendian, Assistant Director, members of the Othering & Belonging Institute, University of California, Berkeley, will present their findings on the Inclusiveness Index. They have ranked every US state (and 133 countries) by their levels of inclusion. The Inclusiveness Index examines inclusivity in terms of race, religion, gender (sex), sexual orientation, and disability, among other social groups using several measures. These include outgroup violence; political …

Samir Gambhir and Stephen Menendian, UCB – The Inclusiveness Index Read More »