LBNL Physics Division Research Progress Meetings

SPEAKER: Stuart Bale (UC Berkeley)- TITLE: LuSEE 'Night': The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment
2023-03-30 16:00 - 17:00 UTC
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
Date: MARCH 30, 2023
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
SPEAKER: Stuart Bale (UC Berkeley)
TITLE: LuSEE ‘Night’: The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment
ABSTRACT: The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Explorer ‘LuSEE Night’ is a low frequency radio astronomy experiment that will be delivered to the farside of the Moon by the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program in late 2025 or early 2026. The payload system is being developed jointly by NASA and the US Department of Energy (DOE) and consists of a 4 channel, 50 MHz Nyquist baseband receiver system and 2 orthogonal ~6m tip-to-tip electric dipole antennas. LuSEE Night will enjoy standalone operations through the lunar night, without the electromagnetic interference (EMI) of an operating lander system and antipodal to our noisy planet Earth.
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Speaker: Adam Miller ( Northwestern)- TITLE: Red after Dead – Understanding the Progenitors of "Cool" Explosions
2023-03-23 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room- 50A-5132
Title: Red after Dead – Understanding the Progenitors of “Cool” Explosions

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss open questions in our quest to develop a map between progenitor systems and supernova explosions. Solving the puzzle has important ramifications for understanding the chemical enrichment of the Universe and galactic evolution and feedback. I will highlight Type Ia supernovae and discuss an exquisite set of observations obtained by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). From the early observations we can constrain the progenitors, and we have recently identified a new subclass of peculiar Type Ia supernovae that comes from a unique progenitor channel. To close I will discuss a new project, the La Silla Southern Sky Survey (LS4). LS4 is upgrading the Quest camera to fill the 20 sq. deg. focal plane with red-sensitive LBNL CCDs to conduct a new time-domain survey. This instrument is uniquely sensitive to red transients in the local universe, including (hopefully) the optical counterparts to gravitational wave events.
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EVENT CANCELED: SPEAKER: Gabriel Orebi Gann (LBNL)-TITLE: Let There be Light: next-generation neutrino detection at Theia
2023-03-16 16:00 - 17:00
EVENT CANCELED
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: March 16, 2023
TIME: 4:00 PM
TITLE: Let There be Light: next-generation neutrino detection at Theia
ABSTRACT: Neutrinos are some of the most fascinating particles that occur in nature. Over one billion times lighter than the proton, the neutrino was once thought to be massless and to travel at the speed of light. The Nobel-Prize winning discovery of neutrino oscillations demonstrated that neutrinos have non-zero mass, which opens up the unique possibility of the neutrino being its own antiparticle, known as a Majorana fermion. This talk will discuss the physics landscape, and present recent technological advances that enable a new kind of “hybrid” neutrino experiment, which would combine two highly successful detection techniques: the topological information of Cherenkov detectors, with the high light yield of scintillators. The Theia detector would be capable of combining both signals to achieve unprecedented levels of particle and event identification, offering a rich program of science across high-energy particle, nuclear and astrophysics. If deployed as one of the “modules of opportunity” at the DUNE far site, Theia could offer insights into both CP violation, and the search for Majorana neutrinos: the two ingredients necessary to shed light on the source of the matter antimatter asymmetry in our Universe.
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SPEAKER: Richie Bonventre(LBNL)-TITLE: Status of the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab
2023-03-09 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
SPEAKER: Seth R. Johnson (ORNL)
TITLE: Status of the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab
ABSTRACT: The Mu2e experiment, currently under construction at Fermilab, will search for the charged-lepton flavor violating (CLFV) neutrino-less conversion of a negative muon into an electron in the field of a nucleus. It aims to achieve a four-orders of magnitude improvement in sensitivity over previous experiments, allowing it to probe new physics at mass scales up to 10^4 TeV. In this talk I will present the current status of the experiment, improvements to the track reconstruction algorithm, and results from vertical slice tests of the straw tracker.
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SPEAKER: John Groh (NIST)- TITLE: Pointing Superconductors at the Sky: Towards new fundamental physics through precision cosmic microwave background measurements
2023-03-02 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
Title: Pointing Superconductors at the Sky: Towards new fundamental physics through precision cosmic microwave background measurements
Abstract: The cosmic microwave background is an incredible tool for probing fundamental physics, both as a snapshot of the early universe and as a backlight to subsequent cosmic evolution. The next generation of observatories will cross several important qualitative thresholds for characterizing possible cosmic inflation mechanisms and neutrino masses while also constraining dark energy, light relic particles, and modified gravity. To make these measurements, these observatories will require at least an order of magnitude improvement in both sensitivity and size, presenting significant instrumentation challenges. In this talk, I will discuss key technology advances leading to more capable instruments, focusing on highly multiplexed readout of the increasingly large cryogenic sensor arrays. I will also describe work incorporating novel instrumentation technologies into a new microwave observatory – the Simons Array – and commissioning it at its observing site in the Chilean Atacama. Not only are these developments enabling new physics and cosmology measurements through the Simons Array, SPT-3G, the Simons Observatory, and AliCPT experiments, but they are also building technological readiness as the field prepares for CMB-S4.
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SPEAKER: Seth R. Johnson (ORNL)-TITTLE: Celeritas v0.2: a new Monte Carlo particle transport code for detector simulation on GPUs
2023-02-21 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
SPEAKER: Seth R. Johnson (ORNL)
TITLE: Celeritas v0.2: a new Monte Carlo particle transport code for detector simulation on GPUs
ABSTRACT: Celeritas is a new Monte Carlo particle transport code for simulating High Energy Physics detectors on GPUs. The initial development release supports standard EM physics in a standalone testing mode. In the last six months, the Celeritas team has developed new code capabilities for integrating with detector simulation frameworks, verification tools, and general Geant4 applications. This presentation will review the core capabilities, demonstrate examples of Geant4 integration, and show initial performance results.

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SPEAKER: Clara Verges (Harvard)- TITLE: A window on the Universe with the next-generation of millimeter-wave telescopes
2023-02-16 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
Title: A window on the Universe with the next-generation of millimeter-wave telescopes
Abstract: Cosmology has experienced a considerable surge in the past thirty years, and is now well established as a precision science. While the standard cosmological model provides an effective description of the observed Universe, many fundamental questions remain unresolved. From shedding light on the very first fractions of second after the Big Bang to unveiling the dark Universe and looking for exotic physics, the Cosmic Microwave Background continues to be a unique probe for fundamental physics. The next generation of CMB polarisation observatories, embodied by CMB-Stage 4 for ground observations, will explore this window into the Universe in an unprecedented way, enabling breakthrough science. I will review how current experiments such as the BICEP/Keck telescopes pave the way for this next stage by developing efficient technologies and observing strategies, and by sharpening constraints on theoretical models. I will then discuss the technological challenges that the CMB community must meet to ensure the scientific success of future experiments.
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NO RPM TODAY 2/14/2023
2023-02-14 16:00 - 17:00

Speaker: Sara Simon (Fermilab)-Title: Precision Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background
2023-02-09 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
Title: Precision Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background
Abstract: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides an unparalleled opportunity to advance our understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe. Recent and ongoing experiments have contributed to our understanding of neutrinos, dark energy, and dark matter through measurements of large-scale structure imprinted on the CMB and constrained the conditions in the early universe, tightly restricting inflationary and other cosmological models through measurements of CMB polarization. Next-generation CMB experiments like CMB-S4 will further constrain the sum of the neutrino masses and the number of relativistic species, expand our understanding of dark energy and dark matter, and set new constraints on cosmological models describing the first moments of the universe. The polarization in the CMB is faint, so future experiments must be at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than current experiments. These unprecedented levels of sensitivity require improved systematic mitigation via modeling and novel calibration techniques. I will give an overview of the science achievable with these next-generation experiments and the advances in technology that are critical for its this leap in performance.
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SPEAKER: Steve Choi (Cornell)- TITLE: Probing fundamental physics by mapping the millimeter and submillimeter sky
2023-02-07 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5-5132
Title: Probing fundamental physics by mapping the millimeter and submillimeter sky
Abstract: Cosmology has transformed from a field of speculation to precision science as a result of a wealth of data from sensitive instruments. In particular, precise observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have revolutionized our understanding of the Universe. Despite the success of the standard model of cosmology (ΛCDM) in describing much of the cosmos with just six parameters, many fundamental questions remain unresolved. Are there primordial gravitational waves? Are there new light relic particles? How will the current cosmological tensions be resolved? Improved mapping of the millimeter and submillimeter sky will help address these questions. I will highlight recent results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), and describe how the new ACT maps will advance our understanding of the Universe beyond Planck. I will also present recent progress on CCAT-prime and Simons Observatory that are paving the way for CMB-S4 in pursuit of next-generation cosmology.
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SPEAKER: Post Doc Industry Event - TITLE: How to Transition from Academia to Industry?
2023-02-02 16:00 - 17:00 | 50-Auditorium
This is an In-Person {HYBRID} Event
Location: B50 Auditorium
TITLE: How to Transition from Academia to Industry?
ABSTRACT: Physics division IDEA committee is hosting a second panelist event where we invite former LBNL physics division postdocs to share their experiences on making transitions from academia to industry. Please join us in person or through zoom for a lively discussion.
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SPEAKER: Dan Carney (LBNL) - TITLE: The End of Measurement and The Last Lab
2023-01-26 16:00 - 17:00
This is an In-Person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room- 50A-5132
Title: The End of Measurement and The Last Lab
Abstract: I will give a breezy overview–designed to be provocative and hopefully enjoyable–of the way quantum mechanical noise enters a number of “holy grail” experimental targets in HEP. The recent theoretical observation that PTOLEMY as designed cannot actually detect relic neutrinos, due to Heisenberg uncertainty in the tritium target, will serve as an opening cautionary tale. I will then explain how one could in principle circumvent this problem, and use this as a springboard to discuss a few other possible experiments: measurement of the neutrino mass using a PTOLEMY-esque scheme, detection of “single gravitons” and/or gravitational entanglement, and finally the direct detection of ultraheavy dark matter purely through its gravitational interaction.
These examples are chosen to motivate the core idea: the fundamental limits imposed by quantum mechanical noise are still broadly unknown, and a great deal of work is still needed to both identify these limits theoretically and engineer devices that can approach them.
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SPEAKER: Peter Sorensen (LBNL)- TITLE: Snowmass Report Highlights 4: Instrumentation Frontier
2023-01-19 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID – 50A-5132 – Sessler Conference Room
This is an In-Person [Hybrid] Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room- 50A-5132
TITLE: Snowmass Report Highlights 4: Instrumentation Frontier
ABSTRACT:
The Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise (a.k.a. “Snowmass”) is organized by the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of the American Physical Society. Snowmass is a scientific study. It provides an opportunity for the entire particle physics community to come together to identify and document a scientific vision for the future of particle physics in the U.S. and its international partners. Snowmass will define the most important questions for the field of particle physics and identify promising opportunities to address them.
The Snowmass exercise is now approaching its end, with most groups’ reports now available from the website (https://snowmass21.org/start).
This seminar series has reviewed the most important messages coming out from these reports in a set of talks, with ample time for questions. In this final planned installment, delayed by the Chamberlain interview talks, we will hear highlights from the Instrumentation Frontier, presented by Peter Sorensen.
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SPEAKER: Kevin Fanning – Ohio State – TITLE: Excitement and Challenges with Multiplexed Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys
2022-12-16 12:00 - 13:00
This is an in-person Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Excitement and Challenges with Multiplexed Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys
ABSTRACT:
The ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey is collecting galaxy redshifts at an astounding rate. Analysis from this new data promises exciting new constraints on big cosmological problems such as dark energy models and primordial non-gaussianity along with a measurement of the sum of the neutrino masses. Key technologies including the robotic focal plane system help enable nearly 5,000 simultaneous spectra with on average 2 minutes between exposures. In this talk I will describe some of the challenges encountered optimizing the DESI instrument for science results. Furthermore, I will discuss some of the impact the focal plane and fiber assignment algorithms have on galaxy clustering data and some novel mitigations I am exploring to resolve this problem. Finally, I will conclude with a look to the future and how we can engage in current efforts to build on the success of DESI.
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SPEAKER: Josephine Paton – University of Oxford – TITLE: Directional Neutrino Measurements in Liquid Scintillators
2022-12-09 12:00 - 13:00
This is a VIRTUAL Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Directional Neutrino Measurements in Liquid Scintillators
ABSTRACT:
Neutrinos are one of the most enigmatic particles in the Standard Model. Precise measurements of their properties are vital for our understanding of the subatomic world, and may bring us closer to answering questions such as “Why do neutrinos have mass?” and “Why is the universe matter dominated?”. In order to do this, novel technologies and methodologies are being developed to extract as much information as possible from the interactions of neutrinos on matter.
Liquid scintillators have been utilised in neutrino detectors for decades, benefitting from a high light yield which leads to precise energy reconstruction. However, scintillation light is isotropic, meaning scintillator detectors do not benefit from the directional information used in Cherenkov-based neutrino detectors. Significant investment has been put into developing new methods to extract Cherenkov information from scintillation signals, allowing for a combination of energy precision and directional background rejection. In this talk I outline the methods developed for directional reconstruction in the SNO+ experiment, and present the first demonstration event-by-event directionality of solar neutrinos in a high yield scintillator.
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SPEAKER: Jaafar Chakrani – Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet, CNRS, Ecole polytechnique – TITLE: Neutrino interactions: a challenge for T2K and beyond
2022-12-08 16:00 - 17:00
This is an IN-PERSON Event
Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Neutrino interactions: a challenge for T2K and beyond
ABSTRACT:
Neutrino oscillations offer a unique opportunity to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. Multiple current and planned experiments aim at precisely characterizing these oscillations with neutrinos artificially produced in accelerators. This is the case of the T2K experiment, located in Japan, which provides one of the world-leading constraints on how neutrinos oscillate.
An important obstacle in the making of such results is the modeling of neutrino interactions which could bias oscillation measurements. Indeed, the uncertainties associated with neutrino-nucleus interactions are difficult to quantify and constrain as they cover a large range of poorly-understood nuclear physics of how neutrinos interact.
In this seminar, I will present how accelerator-based neutrino experiments measure these oscillations, with a focus on how we tackle the challenge of modeling neutrino-nucleus interactions in the T2K experiment. Furthermore, I will show how the ongoing upgrade of the T2K near detector will provide valuable information to significantly improve our understanding of neutrino interactions. Finally, I will discuss the prospects of overcoming this challenge in the context of the next-generation experiment DUNE.

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SPEAKER: Ciaran Hasnip – University of Oxford – TITLE: The DUNE Neutrino PRISM
2022-12-07 13:00 - 14:00
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Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: The DUNE Neutrino PRISM
ABSTRACT:
The observation of neutrino flavour oscillations, and the non-zero neutrino mass, is the first confirmed measurement of physics beyond the standard model of particle physics. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next-generation neutrino experiment designed to study these flavour oscillations in a 1300 km baseline neutrino beam. DUNE aims to measure CP violation in the lepton sector, determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and precisely measure the neutrino oscillation parameters in a single experiment. The Precision Reaction Independent Spectrum Measurement (PRISM) concept presents a novel way to perform a neutrino oscillation analysis, which has the potential to significantly reduce the impact of neutrino cross section systematic uncertainties in DUNE through the use of data-driven predictions of the measured neutrino event rate. After introducing the physics of neutrino oscillations, this seminar will review the DUNE experiment and the role PRISM will play in its physics program.
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SPEAKER: Maria Martinez-Casales – Iowa State University – TITLE: Constraining neutrino interaction incertainties for oscillation measurements in NOvA
2022-12-06 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
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Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Constraining neutrino interaction incertainties for oscillation measurements in NOvA
ABSTRACT:
The NuMI Off-Axis Neutrino Appearance (NOvA) experiment is an 810 km baseline neutrino oscillation experiment measuring the fundamental properties of neutrinos and antineutrinos, using the high statistics data from the Near Detector (ND) at Fermilab to produce predictions for the Far Detector (FD) in Minnesota. The expected neutrino spectrum is simulated using GENIE, with the neutrino cross section model adjusted to better describe the ND data by modifying the rate of Meson Exchange Current (MEC) interactions and the Final State Interactions. In measurements published so far, NOvA has compared the Far Detector data to an energy spectrum obtained from a data-driven prediction method based Near Detector (ND) data called extrapolation. This talk presents an alternate approach that directly constrains physics model parameters in the NOvA simulation using the ND data. The neutrino and antineutrino simulation is divided into subsets based on the multiplicity and topology of visible particles. These samples have meaningful features that are used to constrain the neutrino interaction model and flux parameters using Poisson maximum likelihood fitting procedure. This work shows the fitting method effectively constrains the model uncertainties with pseudodata generated by randomly varying physics parameters in the ND simulation. This is an initial step towards achieving a full analysis that includes the physics model parameters constraint from the ND data fit to measure the neutrino oscillation parameters.
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SPEAKER: Anne Fortman – Harvard – TITLE: Searching for massive new particles using ionization energy loss and time of flight at ATLAS
2022-12-06 12:00 - 13:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
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Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Searching for massive new particles using ionization energy loss and time of flight at ATLAS
ABSTRACT:
During Run 2, the LHC achieved collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, potentially allowing us to produce new fundamental particles of higher masses than ever before. Using ionization energy loss and time-of-flight, we can reconstruct the mass of heavy new particles predicted in a variety of models. In this talk, we discuss the excess seen in the first-wave effort of a search using the Run 2 dataset at ATLAS, and introduce an expanded search including time-of-flight. We present future prospects and discuss the hardware upgrades necessary to continue searching for new physics at the High Luminosity LHC.

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SPEAKER: Roger Huang – LBNL – TITLE: Neutrinos from Different Angles
2022-12-05 13:00 - 14:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
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Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Neutrinos from Different Angles
ABSTRACT:
There still remain many outstanding questions about the behavior and properties of neutrinos, which are the subject of a wide range of experimental programs around the world. CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) is a cryogenic calorimetric experiment operating at ~10 mK to search for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay in Te-130, which could shed light on the nature of neutrino masses and whether they are Majorana particles. I will present the most recent 0νββ results from CUORE, as well as discuss development of deep-cryogenic electronics aimed towards its next-generation upgrade to CUPID (CUORE Upgrade with Particle ID).
In a different regime of neutrino physics, DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment that will enable a variety of precision measurements, including determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy and high-resolution probes of the neutrino CP-violating phase factor. I will discuss the current status and plans for DUNE and its upcoming prototype program ProtoDUNE-II, with a focus on the cryogenic charge readout electronics for the far detectors. I will also discuss efforts to improve neutrino cross-section unfolding methods with the aid of neural networks using the Omnifold technique

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SPEAKER: Chamindu (Chami) Amarasinghe – U. of Michigan – TITLE: Expansive Dark Matter Searches with LZ
2022-12-01 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
This is a VIRTUAL Event
TITLE: Expansive Dark Matter Searches with LZ

ABSTRACT: LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is an underground direct detection experiment that conducted its first search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and set world-leading upper limits on spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon couplings. In this talk I describe this result, and discuss how the WIMP search can be extended by considering all possible WIMP-nucleon interactions at the energy scale of direct detection using an effective field theory (EFT) approach. I also describe how tools from machine learning are applied in the EFT search, and how unsupervised learning can be used to detect anomalies of various sources in data. Finally, I will briefly discuss an experimental concept to measure electron and photon yields of nuclear recoils in liquid xenon at extremely low energies (below 0.3 keVNR), in order to improve the sensitivity of experiments like LZ to low mass WIMPs.
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SPEAKER: Kate Storey-Fisher - New York University - TITLE: Galaxy Clustering with Emulation and Equivariant Machine Learning
2022-11-29 13:10 - 14:10 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
This is a Virtual Event
Location: Zoom from campus In Campbell Hall, Room 131

TITLE: Galaxy Clustering with Emulation and Equivariant Machine Learning
ABSTRACT:

There is significant untapped cosmological information in the clustering of galaxies, particularly at small scales. I will discuss two projects aimed at this. In the Aemulus project we take an emulation approach, populating dark matter only cosmological simulations with a simple galaxy–halo connection model and training machine learning (ML) emulators to predict clustering statistics. I will show that incorporating beyond-standard statistics sensitive to the local environment aids in constraining galaxy bias parameters and increases the precision on recovered cosmological parameters.
To account for uncertainties in galaxy formation, we require improved models of the galaxy–halo connection. I will present a new equivariant ML approach to learning the relationship between dark matter halo and galaxy properties in cosmological simulations. Our approach explicitly respects physical symmetries by describing halos in terms of a large set of invariant dimensionless scalars. I will show that this results in precise predictions of galaxy properties. These frameworks will be critical for the analysis of upcoming spectroscopic surveys.

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SPEAKER: Chen-Hsun (Jay) Chan - University of Wisconsin, Madison - TITLE: Search for Higgs Boson Decaying to Dimuon
2022-11-22 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
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Location: Sessler Conference Room – 50A-5132
TITLE: Search for Higgs Boson Decaying to Dimuon
ABSTRACT:
The search for Higgs boson decaying to dimuon is currently the most promising channel to probe the Yukawa coupling to the second-generation fermions. In this seminar, I will give an overview of the recent search for Higgs boson decaying to dimuon, using the proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector between 2015 and 2018. Despite excellent muon reconstruction, this search is particularly challenging due to the small Higgs to dimuon decay branching ratio and the large amount of Standard Model background. Multiple techniques are developed in order to overcome the challenges and significantly enhance the sensitivity compared to the previous iteration.

With more data to be collected in the near future, it is possible to observe the Higgs to dimuon signal at 5 standard deviation. I will highlight several expected improvements during LHC run-3, which will benefit this measurement. Furthermore, the upgrade to High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will bring a significant improvement to this measurement, thanks to the increased data statistics as well as the upgrade of the ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITk). I will, in the end, discuss the recent development of the ITk pixel upgrade, particularly the testing of the pixel module serial powering.

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SPEAKER: Daniel Kodroff (Penn State) - TITLE: Background Modeling and First Results From The LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Experiment
2022-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
This is a VIRTUAL Event
TITLE: Background Modeling and First Results From The LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Experiment
ABSTRACT: LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a dark matter experiment located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, USA employing a 7 tonne active volume of liquid xenon in a dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC). It’s surrounded by an instrumented xenon “skin” region and gadolinium-loaded liquid scintillator outer detector, primarily serving as active vetoes for gamma-ray and neutron backgrounds, respectively, all contained within an ultra-pure water tank. A comprehensive material
assay and selection campaign for detector components, along with a xenon purification campaign, have further ensured an ultra-low background environment. These mitigations have allowed LZ to achieve a background rate of (63.0 ± 4.5) x 10−6 events/keVee/kg/day in the low energy region, approximately 60 times lower than that of its predecessor LUX experiment. In this low background region, LZ has recently set new world-leading limits for the spin-independent elastic scattering of nuclear recoils of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses above 9 GeV/c^2 using an exposure of 60 live days and a fiducial mass of 5.5 tonnes. This talk will provide an overview of the LZ detector and a description of its backgrounds with an emphasis on techniques to constrain these backgrounds in situ. I will also discuss the first results from LZ and briefly discuss its future science program.
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Meeting ID: 917 8226 8585

SPEAKER: Yuan-Tang Chou (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) - TITLE: Searches for Exotic Higgs Boson Decays with Modern Machine-Learning Methods at the LHC
2022-11-17 12:00 - 13:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
THIS RPM WILL BE AT 12:00 P.M. NOON – November 17, 2022
TITLE – Searches for Exotic Higgs Boson Decays with Modern Machine-Learning Methods at the LHC
ABSTRACT – Advances in machine learning have shifted the paradigm in how we analyze data in High Energy Collider Physics. Particle identification and event reconstruction are areas where significant improvements have been possible by using state-of-art machine-learning methods with domain knowledge. In this talk, I will discuss how we adopt novel approaches that utilize low-level detector information and embed underlying symmetry in machine-learning models to search for physics beyond the Standard Model with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC.
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Meeting ID: 917 8226 8585
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SPEAKER - Andrzej Novak - RWTH Aachen University - Title: Searches for Higgs to Charm Decays with the CMS Experiment using Novel ML Methods
2022-11-15 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
TITLE: Searches for Higgs to Charm Decays with the CMS Experiment using Novel ML Methods

ABSTRACT: Searches for charm decays of the Higgs boson are not only limited by the small coupling but primarily by the considerable difficulty of identifying charm jets. However, recent advances in machine learning methods have drastically improved the performance of flavour identification algorithms. Applying them in analyses of the LHC Run2 data has enabled us to improve the limit on the Higgs to charm rate by a factor of 20 in the last few years. I will give an overview of the latest results obtained with the CMS experiment, focusing on the more recent boosted search.

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SPEAKER - Edward Callaghan - (UCB) - Optical Neutrino Detectors of the Past, Present, and Future
2022-11-10 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
TITLE: Optical Neutrino Detectors of the Past, Present, and Future
ABSTRACT: Large-volume optical detectors are a mainstay of experimental
neutrino physics, with several successful implementations in the past
decades and larger models on the horizon. Traditionally, such detectors
make use of either Cherenkov radiation, produced as a superluminal
charged particle stops, or scintillation light, produced from the
deexcitation of excited molecular states, but rarely both in tandem. I
will describe an R&D campaign to develop technologies suitable for a
hybrid detector, which will exploit both Cherenkov and scintillation
light to implement advanced event reconstruction techniques. This
campaign has culminated in the Eos demonstrator project, which will be
located on the UC Berkeley campus and act as a ton-scale demonstration
of technologies applicable for Theia, a proposed 25+ kiloton hybrid
detector. I will further discuss my work measuring cosmogenic background
production in SNO, a heavy water Cherenkov detector, and a search for
extraterrestrial antineutrinos in SNO+, an upgrade to SNO, which has
completed a phase of water running and is now filled with liquid
scintillator.
This is a HYBRID Meeting

Location: 50A-5132
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 PM
Title: “Snowmass Report Highlights – Part 3”

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SPEAKER: Simone Pagan-Griso - Snowmass Report Highlights - Part 3
2022-11-08 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
TITLE: Snowmass Report Highlights – Part 3
SPEAKERS: This week, we’ll have highlights of the Theory, Rare-Processes and Precision, and Community Engagement Frontiers, presented respectively by the following:

Simon Knapen – Theory Frontier
Dave Brown – Rare-Processes and Precision Frontier
Erin Hansen – Community Engagement Frontier

ABSTRACT: The Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise (a.k.a. “Snowmass”) is organized by the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of the American Physical Society. Snowmass is a scientific study. It provides an opportunity for the entire particle physics community to come together to identify and document a scientific vision for the future of particle physics in the U.S. and its international partners. Snowmass will define the most important questions for the field of particle physics and identify promising opportunities to address them.
The Snowmass exercise is now approaching its end, with most groups’ reports now available from the website (https://snowmass21.org/start).
In this seminar series, we’ll review the most important messages coming out from these reports in a set of brief talks, with ample time for questions.
This week we’ll have highlights of the Neutrino, Cosmic and Underground Facilities, and Cosmic frontiers presented, respectively, by Simon Knapen, Dave Brown, Erin Hansen.

Location: 50A-5132
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 PM
Title: “Snowmass Report Highlights – Part 3”

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HYBRID TALK| Hee-Jong Seo "Accelerating Universe through DESI"
2022-11-03 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
Abstract
One of the most intriguing questions in physics today is the nature of dark energy that is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Three-dimensional maps of galaxies from spectroscopic galaxy surveys provide a giant laboratory to test the nature of the Universe, including dark energy, in a way that is complementary to other cosmic surveys. DESI, being the largest galaxy redshift survey up to date, is currently preparing for the first-year cosmology analysis release in Summer 2023, In this talk, among the key science goals of DESI, I want to focus on the studies of two accelerated expansion phases of the Universe using DESI, one today due to dark energy and the other, cosmic inflation right after the Big Bang. For the former, I will show the first Baryon Acoustic Oscillation detection result using only the first two months of the DESI data. For the latter, I will discuss how we can fight the observational systematics using neural networks and derive a tight constraint on inflation using the DESI Legacy survey.

HYBRID TALK | Mengjiao Xiao (MIT) "In Search of Cosmic-Ray Antinuclei from Dark Matter with the GAPS Experiment"
2022-10-27 16:00 - 17:00 | HYBRID 50A-5132 (Sessler Conference Room), https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/91782268585, 50A-5132
Abstract:
The origin of dark matter is a driving question of modern physics. Finding dark matter in the laboratory and elucidating its properties could revolutionize our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The common challenges for dark matter searches in astrophysical signatures are large and uncertain backgrounds. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a balloon-borne experiment designed to identify low-energy cosmic antinuclei, in particular antideuterons from dark matter annihilation or decay, using the uniquely characterized atomic X-rays and charged particles from the decay of exotic atoms. With such a novel detection approach, benefitting from a custom- d eveloped large- area silicon tracker and a large-acceptance Time-of-Flight system, GAPS is sensitive to antideuterons and even antiheliums with the kinetic energy ≤0.25 GeV/n, which should offer an essentially background-free region to probe many generic dark matter models. Additionally, GAPS will collect a high-statistics antiproton spectrum in an unexplored energy range, and open a sensitivity to cosmic antihelium.
The GAPS instrument consists of a tracker of >1000 custom Si(Li) detectors; a precision- timing, large-area time-of-flight system; and a novel oscillating heat pipe thermal system. GAPS is currently under integration and preparing for the first Antarctic balloon flight in late 2023 while two follow-up flights are planned. This talk will present the science impact of the GAPS experiment, while focusing on its custom-developed instrument technology, including the design principle, commissioning of the GAPS functional prototype, integration and testing of GAPS full payload, and the path forward to the initial flight.

http://physics.lbl.gov/rpm/index.php/events/
If you are looking to confirm if there is an event, due to room reservation, please go to RPM website for a list of all scheduled talks.
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Meeting ID: 917 8226 8585
