NO VIRTUAL INPA Seminar
2022-02-11 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

[UPDATE] VIRTUAL INPA SEMINAR | Sherry Song (Princeton University)
2022-02-18 12:00 - 13:00
Location: via Zoom
Speaker: Sherry Song (Princeton University)
Title: Integration and Analysis of the Balloon-borne Telescope, SPIDER
Abstract:

Ever since the discovery of cosmic microwave background(CMB) in the year of 1965, its existence has led many ground or space observation programs attempt to unveil its nature, of which the SPIDER program is a balloon-borne telescope designed to map the polarization pattern of the CMB at degree angular scale.

Each of SPIDER’s flight consists of 6 independently controlled telescopes. SPIDER-1 flew in January 2015 and the data analysis targets mainly on polarized B-mode detection, using XFaster power spectrum estimator as its main pipeline.

My talk covers the hardware integration of the SPIDER-2 cryo-system and operation, new data at 280GHz from this second flight will complement the first flight, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission. It also covers the pipeline, data analysis and result of SPIDER-1. SPIDER-1 passes the outlier and distribution null test in all frequencies using 500 end-to-end well-constructed null simulations, with a PTE value of 0.78 and 0.56 respectively for all frequency combined case. We derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio r from Feldman-Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding r<0.11 and r<0.19, respectively.

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VIRTUAL INPA SEMINAR | Ralph Massarczyk (LANL)
2022-02-25 12:00 - 13:00
Location: via Zoom
Speaker: Ralph Massarczyk (LANL)
Title: Results from the BEST Sterile Neutrino Oscillation Experiment
Abstract:

The Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions (BEST) searches for the oscillations between active and sterile neutrinos by exploring the gallium anomaly. Based on the Gallium-Germanium Neutrino Telescope (GGNT) of the SAGE experiment, the BEST setup is comprised of two zones of liquid Ga target to explore neutrino oscillations on the meter scale. Any deficits in the 71Ge production rates in the two zones, as well as the differences between them, would be an indication of nonstandard neutrino properties at this short scale. From July 5th to October 23rd 2019, the two-zone target was exposed to the mainly monoenergetic Cr neutrino source ten times with 20 independent 71Ge extractions from the two Ga targets. The 71Ge decay rates were measured from July 2019 to March 2020 to determine the total production rate from the neutrino source. At the end of the experiment, the counting systems were calibrated using 71Ge isotope data taken in November 2020. In this talk, I will give an overview of the experiment and the analysis, and discuss the results from the BEST sterile neutrino oscillation experiment.

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Meeting ID: 979 8302 5115

Joint Special RPM and INPA Seminar | Chelsea Bartram (U of Washington)
2022-03-04 12:00 - 13:00
Location: via Zoom
Speaker: Chelsea Bartram (U. of Washington)
Title: “Combing the Cosmos: A Deep Dive Into the Nature of (Dark) Matter and Fundamental Symmetries”
Abstract:

One of the most striking mysteries in modern astrophysics manifests itself as an absence of matter needed to form a narrative consistent with our current understanding of the universe. A promising candidate for the so-called ‘dark matter’ is the axion, whose wave-like nature requires unique technology to detect. The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) leverages the inverse Primakoff effect to search for axions using an ultra-low noise receiver chain and microwave cavity in a strong magnetic field. If discovered, the axion could not only solve the dark matter problem, but also resolve the Strong CP problem. Fundamental symmetries have been at the center of many deep astrophysical questions. As such, they have served as a driving force behind my research, motivating my graduate search for CP- and CPT-violation in the lepton sector, as well as my post-doctoral work in axion dark matter. I present my prior research and explain how it fits into my larger ambition to understand the
large-scale structure and composition of the universe with CMB-S4.

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Diego Redigolo (CERN) "Is Dark Matter Electroweak? Towards a final test of WIMP Dark Matter"
2022-03-25 12:00 - 13:00
Abstract:
The possibility that the DM sits inside an EW multiplet is still viable in scenarios where Z-mediated elastic scattering of DM with nucleons is absent. Using an effective field theory approach, I will classify all the viable DM EW multiplets and derive the freeze-out predictions on the DM mass. Interestingly, the parameter space of these WIMPs can be fully explored by combining future large exposure Xenon detectors and a hypothetical high energy muon collider.
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Artur Ankowski (SLAC) "Determination of the argon spectral function from (e, e'p) data"
2022-04-15 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132- Sessler, 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA
Abstract:

Reliable reconstruction of neutrino energy in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and in the Fermilab-based short-baseline oscillation program requires a realistic description of the ground state properties of the argon nucleus. Toward this goal, the E12-14-012 experiment in Jefferson Lab Hall A measured proton knockout from argon induced by scattering of 2.2-GeV electrons, collecting data over a broad range of the initial proton’s momenta and the excitation energies of the residual nucleus. Presenting the results of the recent paper, arXiv:2203.01748, I will describe the analysis that lead to the extraction of the proton spectral function of argon. I also will discuss the obtained results in the context of past experiments, performed using electron, proton, and deuteron beams.

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Andrei Puiu (Gran Sasso Science Institute) "Direct Dark Matter Search with COSINUS"
2022-05-06 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
ABSTRACT:
The search for dark matter is one of the most important challenges in modern physics. In my presentation I will make a brief introduction to the direct detection of dark matter in underground facilities, followed by the description of the COSINUS experiment. COSINUS aims at the direct detection of dark matter scattering off Na and I nuclei. It will use sodium Iodide crystals as absorber and hence as the dark matter target in a low temperature detector operating at ~10 mK. The unique feature of COSINUS is the simultaneous measurement of both the phonon signal and the scintillation signal. This will allow us to perform an event-by-event particle identification using the light yield of each energy deposition in the crystal, and to finally disentangle electron from nuclear recoil events. I will give an overview of the experimental technique and of the experimental facility currently under construction in Hall B of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.
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Christopher Grant (University of Boston) - New Results from KamLAND-Zen 800 with Nearly a Ton-Year Exposure of Xe-136
2022-05-13 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132- Sessler, 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA
KamLAND-Zen is searching for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay in Xe-136 using a xenon-loaded liquid scintillator. The KamLAND-Zen detector was recently upgraded with almost double the amount of xenon and an ultra-low radioactivity container. With almost 1-ton-year of Xe-136 exposure, we are exploring the double-beta decay parameter space corresponding to the inverted hierarchy for the first time. We have not yet observed NDBD, but these results make use of novel algorithms to perform beta-gamma separation using ML and tag spallation products on day-long time scales. We obtain a lower limit for the 0νββ decay half-life of 2.3×10^26 yr at 90% C.L., corresponding to upper limits on the effective Majorana neutrino mass of 36-156 meV using commonly adopted nuclear matrix element calculations.

Speaker: Zhelei Xu (MIT) - Precision Cosmology: from CMB and 21cm
2022-09-02 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132- Sessler, 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA
Date: Friday, September 2, 2022
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Location: Conference Room B50-5132
Speaker: Zhelei Xu (MIT)
Title: Precision Cosmology: from CMB and 21cm
This is a HYBRID Meeting: Please see ZOOM Information Below
ABSTRACT: Over the past decades, observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have established the standard cosmological model. In the future, 21cm signals from neutral hydrogen have great potential for cosmological and astrophysical studies. In this talk, I will review the previous CMB observations and how it established the ΛCDM cosmology model. Then I will discuss the instrumentation and calibration of the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) and the Simons Observatory (SO). At the end, I will discuss how we can use the 21cm observation as a powerful probe to study cosmology, and introduce our novel mapping method for 21cm interferometric data.
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SPEAKER: Yuuki Omori - University of Chicago
2022-09-16 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Date: Friday, September 16, 2022
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Speaker: Yuuki Omori (University of Chicago)
Title: “Constraining cosmology and astrophysics using the combination of CMB x LSS, and understanding biases in cross-correlation measurements”
Abstract:
Cross-correlation measurements between CMB and LSS observables is becoming an increasingly popular approach to constrain cosmology and astrophysics. Since CMB and LSS surveys have different experimental systematic effects, cross-correlation measurements are known to be minimally impacted by these effects. However, what is often disregarded are the astrophysical systematic effects, which are present in both CMB and LSS data, which contaminate cross-correlation measurements. In the first part of the talk, I will present the recent results from the DESxSPT 6x2pt analysis and discuss how we mitigated such biases. In the second part of the talk, I will present a new simulation suite that has both CMB and LSS observables that can be used to study these biases.
Hybrid Location: Conference Room 50-5132
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THE NEXT INPA SEMINAR WILL BE FRIDAY: September 23, 2022, at 12:00 Noon

Jeff Cooke (Swinburne University) "The Keck Wide-Field Imager and the future direction of the Keck Observatory"
2022-10-07 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
ABSTRACT:
The Keck Wide-Field Imager (KWFI) is a 1 degree diameter field of view wide-field optical imager for Keck that will be the most powerful wide-field imager in the world for the foreseeable future. KWFI has extreme sensitivity from 10000A down to 3000A that will enable new science from the high redshift Universe, to time-domain science, to the local Universe and the solar system that cannot be done on any other existing or planned telescope for decades. We have now entered into the era of next-generation facilities, including JWST and NASA Roman space telescope, the Cherenkov Telescope Array, the Square Kilometre Array, LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph, Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, and 30m-class telescopes, with larger, more sensitive facilities in planning for the next decades, such as the Cosmic Explorer, LISA, LUVOIR, and others. In this talk, I will discuss how KWFI’s extremely deep, wide-field imaging is vital for nearly all science cases for these facilities (many are billion-dollar facilities) operating at all wavelengths and how it will greatly extend their reach. KWFI will excel at targeted science programs, which make up the bulk of all Keck community science. I will discuss the status and continued progress of KWFI and development of a deployable secondary mirror to enable new science and fast imaging and spectroscopy capability in the same night.
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NO INPA SEMINAR TODAY 10/21/2022
2022-10-21 12:00 - 13:00

Henry Klest (Stony Brook University) Physics and Detectors at Nuclear Colliders: Prospective interdisciplinary measurements and technologies at U.S based facilities in the coming decades
2022-10-28 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Abstract:
High energy nuclear physics in the U.S. is undergoing a revitalization 22 years after the turn on of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab. Two major upcoming experimental efforts, sPHENIX at RHIC, planned to turn on next year, and the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), planned to start running in 2032, are coming to fruition. With these new facilities come new opportunities to explore physics and hardware complementarity with other fields. In this talk, I will briefly discuss the heavy ion program at RHIC, focusing on the design and construction of the sPHENIX TPC. I will also outline some of the planned measurements and detector technologies for the EIC and their generic applications to other fields.

Speaker: Dan Werthimer (UC Berkeley (SETI) "What's New in SETI and High Performance Signal Processing, and The PANOSETI IR/Visible Ultra-Wide Field Nanosecond Time Scale Transient Search"
2022-11-04 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Abstract:
Dan will review current and SETI radio and optical searches, and also review CASPER open source technologies for real time signal processing instrumentation. The CASPER collaboration develops open source hardware, software, GPUware, FPGA gateware, tools, libraries, reference designs, tutorials, training videos, and workshops for astronomy instrumentation.
CASPER instrumentation is utilized mostly for radio astronomy, but also for physics, medicine, genomics, and engineering. More info at http://casper.berkeley.edu
The PANOSETI experiment searches a largely unexplored parameter space, observing a large field of view simultaneously (4,450 degrees) for nanosecond to second time scale transients at visible and near-IR wavelengths. The PANOSETI observatory employs two domes separated by ~1 km. Data from the two domes is cross-correlated to distinguish between astrophysical events and atmospheric phenomena (eg: Cherenkov radiation). Each PANOSETI dome contains ~45 telescopes; each telescope covers a 10 by 10 degree field. We have deployed a prototype PANOSETI observatory at Lick Observatory; where we also plan to build a full scale system. The small aperture, wide field-of-view, and low cost of the PANOSETI telescopes make them well-suited for high energy gamma-ray astronomy.

SPEAKER - Peter Craig (LBNL) - TITLE: "Effects of Microlensing on Time Delay Measurements from Strongly Lensed Supernovae"
2022-11-11 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132 / https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/95016696011?pwd=[REDACTED] One Cyclotron Road, 50A-5132, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
ABSTRACT: Strongly lensed supernovae are highly valuable cosmological probes, sensitive to both the Hubble constant and the distribution of dark matter. Measuring time delays in strong lensing systems allows for independent measurements of the Hubble constant, providing a mechanism to resolve the current Hubble tension. These time delays are also sensitive to the dark matter substructures located along the line of sight. Microlensing effects from stars in the lensing galaxy can contaminate measurements of the time delays, making some methods for measuring time delays unreliable. We consider methods for measuring time delays with both Type Ia and Type II-P supernovae by simulating spectra in microlensing systems. Both types of supernovae may be effectively used to measure the Hubble constant, especially with the number of detections that are expected with LSST and the Roman Space Telescope. These measurements can also be used to constrain the properties of dark matter substructure given a sufficient number of systems. We’ve also been working on understanding the local distributions of dark matter using an “acceleration ladder” built using local direct acceleration measurements combined with dynamical constraints on the Milky Way potential.

SPEAKER - Nick Kokron (Stanford University) - TITLE: Pen-and-Paper Meets Supercomputing: Building Accurate Models for Cosmological Surveys
2022-11-16 12:00 - 13:00
LOCATION: IN-PERSON – Sessler Conference Room Building 50A-5132
TITLE: Pen-and-Paper Meets Supercomputing: Building Accurate Models for Cosmological Surveys
ABSTRACT: Stage-IV cosmological surveys are poised to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe. The vast data sets collected by surveys like DESI, Rubin and CMB-S4 will be orders of magnitude more powerful than their precursors from the last decade, and will significantly sharpen our understanding of unknown properties of the Universe. These include the properties of dark energy, the masses of neutrinos and the fundamental nature of the primordial fluctuations in the early Universe. However the statistical uncertainties of upcoming observations are so small that models for the statistics we measure are not yet accurate enough to analyze their whole datasets. I will introduce a program of research dedicated to addressing the challenge of accurately modelling these data and making our cosmological surveys the most powerful they can be. This program is underpinned by a fruitful marriage of traditionally disparate techniques — supercomputer simulations and pen-and-paper calculations — to describe the growth and evolution of large-scale structure in the Universe. I will show that their combination is more powerful than the sum of its parts, and will play a key role in extracting the most amount of information from DESI and its cross-correlations with weak and CMB lensing surveys in the coming future.
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SPEAKER: Daniel Kodroff (Penn State University) - TITLE: Background Modeling and First Results From The LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Experiment
2022-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | 50A-5132- Sessler, 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA
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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SPEAKER: Arun Persaud (LBNL-ATAP) - TITLE: Applications of Associate Particle Imaging at Berkeley Lab from Carbon in Soil to Nuclear Data
2023-02-03 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: February 3, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: Applications of Associate Particle Imaging at Berkeley Lab from Carbon in Soil to Nuclear Data
ABSTRACT: We developed an Associated Particle Imaging(API) system that uses inelastic neutron scattering reactions to measure 3d density maps for individual elements in a target area. We apply this method to measuring carbon in soil for agricultural applications, e.g. quantifying carbon sequestration. We also have used API recently together with colleagues from NASA and APL to calibrate neutron detectors and for precise measurement of cross sections as well as planned bulk density measurements of meteorites. In this talk, we will give an overview of API as a technique and these applications.
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SPEAKER: Alexander Leder (UCB) – TITLE: Current status of the cavity and resonance based experiments
2023-02-10 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: February 10, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: Current status of the cavity and resonance based experiments
ABSTRACT: Axions are a well-motivated dark matter candidate, which currently have a wide open and accessible parameter space, with few constraints on their mass and coupling strength to photons. On the higher end of the mass range (> 1 GHz), experiments such as HAYSTAC or ADMX seek to measure the coupling of axions to the photon inside a resonant cavity, making use of better than standard quantum limit sensors and very high Q values. On the lower end (between 5 kHz – 5 MHz), resonant experiments such The DMRadio-50L experiment seeks to explore a wide portion of this axion parameter space, taking advantage of lumped element high-Q resonators with optimal out-of-band sensitivity. In this talk, I will present an overview of the current status of the cavity and resonance based experiments currently underway to fully explore the over 22 orders of magnitude currently available to us.
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SPEAKER: R.G. Hamish Robertson (Univ of Washington)- TITLE: The direct road to neutrino mass
2023-02-17 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: February 17, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: The direct road to neutrino mass
ABSTRACT: The discovery of neutrino oscillations gave us proof that neutrinos have mass, a direct contradiction of the minimal standard model of particle physics. But how much mass? Oscillations cannot give a number for the mass, other than that the average of the three masses must be at least 0.02 eV. The mass is needed to build the new standard model, and to help pin down such things as the equation of state of dark energy and the evolution of structure in cosmology. KATRIN, the first new laboratory experiment on the beta spectrum of tritium in more than 20 years, has now shown the mass to be no greater than 0.8 eV. KATRIN continues toward its sensitivity goal of 0.2 eV. If the mass is not in this range, a very different approach called “Project 8” has passed proof-of-concept tests with a scheme that might have even greater sensitivity.
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NO SPEAKER TODAY- FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023
2023-02-23 12:00 - 13:00

Speaker: Daniel Carney (LBL)-TITLE: Proposal for a Levitated Invisible Particle Sensor
2023-03-03 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: March 3, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: Proposal for a Levitated Invisible Particle Sensor
ABSTRACT: Recently Dave Moore (Yale), Kyle Leach (Mines) and I proposed the use of a levitated mechanical quantum sensor combined with a pixelated electron/photon detector to look for invisible particles, particularly heavy sterile neutrinos in the keV-MeV range. The basic device consists of ~100nm scale silica spheres implanted with radioisotopes. When the isotope decays, via beta or electron capture, it will generically eject e-/gammas as well as a neutrino which escape the nanosphere, while the daughter atom is trapped in the sphere and causes it to recoil. With measurement precision on the sphere recoil at the “standard quantum limit”–which we have already achieved in a similar device at Yale–one can kinematically reconstruct the emitted neutrino momentum. I’ll outline how this works, compare it to previous AMO-y approaches (e.g. HUNTER), and talk about what we’d like to do at LBL.
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NO INPA SEMINAR TODAY
2023-03-10 12:00 - 13:00

[EVENT CANCELED]:SPEAKER: Jonathan Echevers (UCB)-TITLE: The EXO program: Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay Searches in Xe-136
2023-03-17 12:00 - 13:00
EVENT CANCELED
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: March 17, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: The EXO program: Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay Searches in Xe-136
ABSTRACT: Neutrinoless double beta (0vBB) decay is currently one of the most compelling searches in nuclear and particle physics. If found, it would imply the existence of Majorana fermions and lepton number violation, both new physics beyond the Standard Model. The EXO-200 experiment consisted of a time projection chamber (TPC) with 200 kg of enriched liquid xenon (LXe), optimized to search for 0vBB of Xe-136. Data acquisition took place from 2011 to the end of 2018, with a total exposure of 234.1kg yr. We found no statistically significant evidence for 0vBB, leading to a lower limit on the half-life of 3.5×10^25 yr at the 90% confidence level (CL). The ultra-low background necessary for this search also provides a unique opportunity to probe other exotic processes, such as Lorentz violation in double-beta decay, electron recoils from dark matter, Majoron emitting modes of double-beta decay, and others. The first part of this talk will focus on the EXO-200 experiment and recent results for exotic-physics searches using this detector. In the second half of this presentation I will discuss the next generation experiment, nEXO, a 5 tonne LXe TPC with a projected 0vBB half-life sensitivity of 1.35×10^28 yr at the 90% CL in 10 years of data-taking.
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[NO INPA SPEAKER] -SPEAKER: TBA
2023-03-24 12:00 - 13:00
[NO INPA SPEAKER] – FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2023
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: March 24, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: TBA
ABSTRACT: TBA
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SPEAKER: Agnes Ferte (KIPAC, SLAC)-TITLE: Preparing for discovery of new physics with the Rubin Observatory
2023-03-31 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: March 31, 2023
TIME: 12:00 PM
TITLE: Preparing for discovery of new physics with the Rubin Observatory
ABSTRACT: The coming decade will offer a unique opportunity to tests physics using cosmological probes, thanks to the new generation of galaxy surveys such as LSST by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and CMB experiments. We will be able to test dark energy and the laws of gravity on cosmic scales with unprecedented precision, both through the evolution of the background and growth of structures in the Universe. I will explain the multiprobe analysis we performed, especially focusing on weak gravitational lensing, and results we obtained using Dark Energy Survey data (arxiv:2207.05766), precursor of LSST. I will then describe how such analyses with future data are shaping and the gaps left to fill. I will end by describing the status of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, under construction in Chile and its future.
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SPEAKER: Noah Sailer (UC Berkeley)- Title: Accurate cosmology from CMB lensing and galaxy surveys
2023-04-07 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
Date: April 7, 2023
Time: 12:00- 1:00 pm
Location: Sessler Conference Room- 50A-5132

Speaker: Noah Sailer (UC Berkeley)
Title: Accurate cosmology from CMB lensing and galaxy surveys
Abstract:
Joint analyses of CMB lensing and spectroscopically-calibrated galaxies have the ability to measure the evolution of matter fluctuations out to high redshifts without the complications of photometric redshift uncertainties and intrinsic alignments. These measurements are rapidly becoming one of the more powerful tools in a cosmologist’s toolkit, enabling precise (and accurate) inference of cosmological parameters and potential deviations from ΛCDM. While cross-correlations are typically more robust against systematic effects, correlated systematics arising from (extra)galactic foreground contamination and masking induce significant biases if not properly accounted for. I will discuss progress towards mitigating these effects, the implementation of these methods in an ongoing cross-correlation analysis of DESI luminous red galaxies and CMB lensing from ACT, and the prospects of future analyses with Stage-V spectroscopy and CMB-S4.

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Speaker: Gabriela Rodrigues Araujo (University of Zurich)- Title: Light-sheet microscopy of color centers: A new venue for neutrino and dark matter detection with passive crystals
2023-04-10 16:00 - 17:00
SPECIAL INPA SEMINAR
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: April 10, 2023
TIME: 4:00 pm
TITLE: Light-sheet microscopy of color centers: A new venue for neutrino and dark matter detection with passive crystals
ABSTRACT: Most of the techniques currently used to detect nuclear recoils from dark matter and neutrinos rely on the collection of charge, prompt scintillation photons or phonons. In this talk, I will discuss a new approach: The use of light-sheet fluorescence microscopy to detect a specific type of crystal defect, so called color centers (CCs), which could be induced by nuclear recoils in solid-state materials. Since CCs require little energy to form (10-50 eV), the proposed detectors can search for particle interactions at unexplored low-energy regions. Despite the nm-size of these defects, excited CCs re-emit color in the visible range, a feature that facilitates their detection. To make this detection channel competitive for rare-event search, a fast imaging method of single CCs is necessary. The PALEOCCENE collaboration works towards this goal: a scalable read-out of CCs for passive detectors of neutrinos and dark matter. In the talk I will discuss the concept, the current R&D and possible applications for dark matter, CEvNS, and nuclear-nonproliferation safeguards.
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SPEAKER: Lisa Schlueter (TU Munich)-TITLE: Neutrino-Mass Analysis with sub-eV Sensitivity and Search for Light Sterile Neutrinos with the KATRIN Experiment
2023-04-11 12:00 - 13:00
SPECIAL INPA SEMINAR
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: April 11, 2023
TIME: 12:00 pm
TITLE: Neutrino-Mass Analysis with sub-eV Sensitivity and Search for Light Sterile Neutrinos with the KATRIN Experiment
ABSTRACT: The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is designed to determine the effective mass of the electron-antineutrino with a target sensitivity of 200 meV/c2 (90% C.L.) in a direct and model-independent way. KATRIN uses a strong gaseous windowless Tritium source associated with a large high-resolution spectrometer (MAC-E filter) to analyze precisely the electron energies from the source. The neutrino mass can be inferred from the shape of the tritium β-decay spectrum in the endpoint region. After global commissioning of the apparatus with Tritium in 2018, KATRIN started its first neutrino mass measurement campaign in spring 2019. This talk presents the data and the analysis of the first two measurement campaigns. In terms of effective electron antineutrino mass, an upper limit of 0.8 eV (90% C.L.) could be inferred, reaching for the first time into the sub-eV regime. Moreover, to exploit the full physics potential of the KATRIN experiment, a search for light sterile neutrinos was conducted. As no sterile-neutrino signal is observed, exclusion contours are drawn at 95% C.L. covering the parameter space of the long-persisting light-sterile neutrino anomalies to a great extent.
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SPEAKER: Prof. Christian Weinheimer (University of Münster)-TITLE: The dark matter experiment XENONnT and first WIMP results
2023-04-14 12:00 - 13:00
This is an In-Person [HYBRID] Event
LOCATION: Sessler Conference Room – 50A – 5132
DATE: April 14, 2023
TIME: 12:00- 1:00 PM
TITLE: The dark matter experiment XENONnT and first WIMP results
ABSTRACT: Evidence for about 6 times more matter in the universe than normal
matter is coming from cosmological observations and analyses on all
scales. What this exotic dark matter is remains still a secret.
The direct search experiment for dark matter XENONnT located at the
Italian underground laboratory LNGS is looking for weakly interacting
massive particles (WIMPs) and other rare event physics. As an upgrade of
the previous experiment XENON1T it uses a dual-phase time projection
chamber with a total mass of 8.5t of liquid xenon. The recent electron
recoil data from a 1.16 t*yr exposure of XENONnT allowed to set
stringent limits on solar axions, an enhanced neutrino magnetic moment
and bosonic dark matter. XENONnT’s unprecedented low background
originates from very careful material selecting and screening as well as
from active removal of Kr-85 and Rn-222 by cryogenic distillation. This
low background rate allows for a rich physics search program with
XENONnT with WIMPs being the main objective.
In this talk the status of the XENONnt experiment and its first WIMP
search results from a blind analysis in an energy range between 3.1 keV
and 60.0 keV and an exposure of approximately 1.1 tonne-year is presented.”
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