News
Miguel Correa selected as a KITP Graduate Fellow
April 16, 2021 • Categories: News
Physics Graduate Student Miguel Correa has been selected as a KITP Graduate Fellow for Summer/Fall 2021. The purpose of the Graduate Fellowship Program is to offer a unique opportunity for a select group of physics doctoral students to participate in KITP research programs and broaden their pursuit of theoretical physics in areas of current research.…
Research shows chemically unique metal-poor stars across the Milky Way born in same smaller galaxies
April 15, 2021 • Categories: News
Some of the rarest of stars found in the halo of the Milky Way—stars enhanced by a set of reactions called the rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process—have a shared chemical history and were likely “born” in the same small parent galaxy, a recent study by University of Notre Dame researchers and collaborators has shown.
Physics graduate students receive 2021 Kaneb Awards
April 14, 2021 • Categories: News
Physics graduate students Kevin Lee (advised by Prof. Ani Aprahamian) and Sethupathy Subramanian (advised by Prof. Dinshaw Balasra) are the recipients of 2021 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Awards from the Kaneb Center.
This award was created in 1999 to recognize graduate student instructors and TAs who demonstrate commitment to exceptional teaching in lectures, seminars, labs, and across the academic profession. The Graduate School and the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning present the award annually to TAs that are nominated by their departments. The award consists of a certificate from the Kaneb Center and Graduate School, a letter documenting the award for the graduate student’s file, a $100 honorarium, and an invitation to a formal event hosted by the Kaneb Center and the Graduate School.…
Wiescher publishes book on radioactivity
April 09, 2021 • Categories: News

Radioactivity: Origin and effects of a natural phenomenon, Volume I, has been recently published by Freimann Professor of Physics Michael Wiescher.
Radioactivity is a frequently and hotly debated topic; the discussions usually revolve around the benefits and dangers of nuclear energy. The topic reaches further -- both in terms of natural occurrences and the many and the multiple applications of radioactivity.…
Holmbeck awarded prestigious Hubble Fellowship
March 31, 2021 • Categories: News
Erika Holmbeck '20 Ph.D. has been awarded the NASA Hubble Fellowship, a highly competitive fellowship renewable for up to three years that will allow her to continue her research on the origin of the universe’s heaviest elements.
Events
Fri Apr 16, 2021
Physics Colloquium: Dr. Soeren Schlichting, Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM
zoom
Exploring the early stages of high-energy heavy-ion collisions
Dr. Soeren Schlichting
Junior Professor
Fakultät für Physik
Universität Bielefeld
Over the past decades experiments at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered the formation of a de-confined Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) , and established a standard picture of the space-time evolution of the QGP based on relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. While high-energy heavy-Ion collisions thus provide a unique laboratory to study QCD matter under extreme conditions, it has proven challenging to understand how the far-from equilibrium matter created in the collision turns into a nearly equilibrated plasma of quarks and gluons. Starting with a general introduction to the physics of heavy-ion collisions, I will highlight recent theoretical progress in understanding thermalization mechanisms in QCD plasmas and address the question how an almost equilibrated Quark-Gluon plasma is created during the early stages of high-energy collisions. I will also discuss how these studies provide new insights into the range of applicability of dissipative fluid dynamics and how the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the QGP can be explored in more detail in future experiments at RHIC and LHC.…
Posted In: Colloquia
Mon Apr 19, 2021
Nuclear Physics Seminar: Dr. Mark Paris, Los Alamos National Laboratory
4:20 PM - 5:20 PM
zoom
Green function approach to R-matrix theory and applications to light nuclear reactions
Dr. Mark Paris
Staff Member, Los Alamos National Laboratory
We analyze reactions of neutrons and charged-particles (p,d,t,h,a) on light elements (A < ~ 20). Our primary tool in this endeavor is the Green function of the Schroedinger equation, with boundary conditions prescribed at finite channel radii, in the phenomenological R-matrix approach. We review some elements of reaction theory in the R-matrix approach context and emphasize the multichannel unitarity of the formalism, which is essential to accurate phenomenological parametrization of the scattering and reaction observables. R-matrix parameters are related to various resonance-parameter representations and we discuss the analytic structure of the T-matrix amplitudes as a function of complex energy. Uncertainty quantification of the resulting observables is given. Several examples of R-matrix evaluations of light compound systems (NN, 5…
Posted In: Nuclear Seminar
Tue Apr 20, 2021
Astrophysics Seminar: Prof. Peng Oh, UC Santa Barbara
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM
zoom
Zooming in on CGM microphysics
Prof. Peng Oh
Department of Physics
UC Santa Barbara
Galaxy halos are fantastic laboratories for the physics of diffuse plasmas, where physical ingredients such as turbulence, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, thermal instability, and many more play out on grand scales. The results have important implications for gas inflow which fuels star formation, as well as associated feedback and recycling processes. I describe recent progress on understanding the microphysics of the circumgalactic medium via high-resolution, idealized simulations which are complementary to cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. I describe numerical experiments on the interaction between turbulence and cooling, which bears on the survival of cold clouds in galactic winds, with special attention to the resolution required for key physical processes. Cold clumps robustly have a power-law distribution in size; I will discuss some ideas on the origin of such power-law distributions. …
Posted In: Astrophysics Seminar
Particle Physics Seminar: Dr. Hyungjin Kim, DESY
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
zoom
Relaxed relaxation
Dr. Hyungjin Kim
DESY, Germany
Cosmological relaxation of electroweak scale has been proposed as a solution to the hierarchy problem. In the early universe, Higgs mass is scanned by an axion-like particle, relaxion, and it is naturally relaxed to the electroweak scale via a certain feedback loop. After a brief introduction to the relaxion scenario, I will discuss that not only the Higgs mass but also the relaxion mass is relaxed to a parametrically smaller value through the same mechanism. This has interesting phenomenological implications as low energy observers might find the relaxion parameters fine-tuned although the mechanism itself is constructed in a technically natural way. I will show that the relaxion coupling constants to the standard model particle could be a few orders of magnitude larger than ‘natural’ values of coupling constants in Higgs portal models. I will also discuss implications of various experiments in different physic frontiers to the relaxed relaxion model as well as its dark matter phenomenology.…
Posted In: Particle Physics Seminar
Wed Apr 21, 2021
University of Notre Dame Mini Break Day
All Day
Mini Break Day
No classes or meetings can be scheduled.…