Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics (INPA) at LBNL

The INPA Seminar weekly talks are on Fridays, starting at 12:00 pm, unless informed otherwise. The seminar talk starts with a brief presentation of the weekly scientific news. Typically, the talks conclude by 1:00 pm. The seminars are held in the Sessler Conference Room,  located in Bldg. 50A- 5132.

The committee members are:

The seminar schedule for the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics (INPA) is tentative and becomes final a few days before the Friday talk.

Please send all suggestions for future INPA talks and speakers to the INPA Committee.

To be added to the INPA News Mailing List, please contact Erica Hall.

Aaron Manalaysay (UC Davis) – 178 nm: The magic of liquid xenon and the search for dark matter

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

The introduction of liquid-xenon (LXe) to the field of dark-matter direct detection caused a paradigm shift in this search. Primarily focused on the search for the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, LXe detectors have improved our sensitivity to these dark-matter candidates by a factor of 10,000 since their introduction roughly ten years ago, compared to the […]

Morgan Askins (UCB) – Search for invisible nucleon decay in the SNO+ detector

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

Many Grand Unified Theories predict processes that would allow baryons to decay to leptons, violating baryon number conservation. The observation of baryon number violation in nucleon decay would be a revelation as well as being pivotal in understanding the apparent asymmetry between baryons and anti-baryons in the universe. This is manifest in some theories primarily […]

Giovanni Benato (UCB, LBL) – Waiting for neutrinoless double beta decay with cryogenic calorimeters

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

Neutrinoless double beta decay is the matter-creating process that is most accessible with the current technology. Its discovery would demonstrate the non-conservation of lepton number and that neutrinos have a Majorana mass component, and indicate a possible solution for the baryon asymmetry of the universe. In this seminar, I will review the current status of […]

SPECIAL – Rajesh Sankaran – (ANL) – Waggle and Array of Things

50-Auditorium

The Waggle Platform is a research project at Argonne National Laboratory to design, develop, and deploy a novel wireless sensor platform with advanced edge computing capabilities to enable a new breed of sensor-driven environmental science and smart city research. The software and hardware designs from the Waggle project are used by the NSF funded Array […]

NO INPA SEMINAR MTG

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

Karl van Bibber (UCB) – A Primer on the Axion

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

This is the first of a two-part series on the axion and the current experimental campaign to find it. This first seminar will focus on the history and motivation of the axion, rooted in the Strong-CP problem, i.e. the absence of the neutron electric dipole moment, some phenomenology, and an overview of experimental avenues to […]

Maria Simanovskaia (UCB) – Searching for Dark Matter Axions with HAYSTAC

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

Continuing on the topic of axion searches from last week, this seminar will highlight one experiment, HAYSTAC, which looks for an axion-induced power excess spectrally coincident with the resonance of a microwave cavity immersed in a strong magnetic field. This is the first such experiment to incorporate a dilution refrigerator and Josephson parametric amplifier and […]

Ben Land (UCB) – Solar neutrinos with SNO, SNO+, and Beyond

50A-5132- Sessler 50A-5132 Sessler Conference Room, CA

This seminar gives a brief historical introduction to solar neutrino detection, and motivates the use of solar neutrinos as a tool to probe physics beyond the standard model. An analysis of SNO data constraining the lifetime of neutrino decay is presented, along with solar neutrino results from SNO+ water phase. Additionally, R&D for simultaneous detection […]

Speaker: Chirag Modi – University of California, Berkeley

Title: Reconstruction of Cosmological Fields in Forward Model Framework - Galaxy Clustering and Intensity Mapping Abstract: In this talk, I will outline the forward model approach to reconstruct cosmological fields in a Bayesian framework. I will focus on two examples - galaxy clustering and neutral hydrogen intensity mapping. In galaxy clustering example, I will use […]

Speaker: Suk Sien Tie – Ohio State University

Title: Cosmology with the Lya forest: beyond two-point statistics, DESI instrumentation Abstract: The Lyman-alpha forest is currently the only probe of cosmology and the state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) between redshifts of z=2 and 6. It's higher-order clustering, specifically its three-point correlation function (3PCF), contains information that can help to constrain fluctuations in the […]

Speaker: Samuel Hinton – University of Queensland

Title: Challenges and pathways forward in supernova cosmology Abstract: Using the DES photometric supernova cosmology analysis as groundwork, I will summarise our current analysis methodologies, from simulations, to transient classification, selection effect treatment, and cosmology. Despite recent improvements in analysis methods, there still exist fundamental challenges in areas spanning the initial empirical SN Ia model […]

INPA guests from campus can now come to the lab early on Fridays. The INPA Common Room (50-5026) is reserved for our guests from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Note that the seminars are now held in 50A-5132 to accommodate a more significant number of attendees.

CPTea Series (also known as INPA Tea Series)

The Physics Division CPTea Series invites you to an In-Person Tea Series 1st Friday of every month at 3:30 pm INPA Conference Room 50-5026.

Everyone is welcome to attend the open forum. Tea and light refreshments will be served.

CPTea_colorV4.jpg

INPA Common Room (50-5026)
Fridays
3:30 pm

Access to the Lab

For a shuttle pass, please email Erica Hall. The pass is only valid for the day of the seminar.

Erica Hall