Graduate And Professional

NPA Seminar, Alba Soto Ontoso, CERN, “The elusive QGP signatures in jet substructure observables”

In heavy-ion collisions, the fragmentation pattern of a high-energy jet is modified by its interactions with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Jet substructure observables, i.e. observables build out of the jet constituents, are thus expected to be sensitive to properties of the medium such as its temperature, length or transport coefficients. So far, experimental measurements at RHIC and the LHC have revealed a narrowing of the jet core with respect to proton-proton collisions.

NPA Seminar, Andi Tan, Princeton University, “Search for Relic Neutrinos in PTOLEMY”

Neutrinos decoupled in the early moments of the Big Bang are believed to be the second most abundant particle in the Universe. PTOLEMY is an experiment for detecting relic neutrinos captured on tritium targets. The challenges of ultra-cold neutrino detection have led to new advances in material technologies, RF detection, TES micro-calorimetry, and a transverse drift electromagnetic spectrometer. In this talk, I will present the current status and prospects of PTOLEMY.

NPA Seminar, Brian Clark, UMD-College Park, “Chasing the Ghost Particle: Neutrino Astrophysics at the South Pole”

High energy (> TeV) neutrinos are unique messengers to the distant, high-energy universe. As chargeless and weakly interacting particles, neutrinos arrive undeflected and unattenuated from cosmic distances, giving us key insights to the properties of astrophysical accelerators at the highest redshifts. In this talk, I will discuss the ongoing work of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect and study extraterrestrial neutrinos across a broad range in energies, from TeV to EeV.

NPA Seminar, Xiaoxuan Chu, BNL, “Searching for gluon saturation at STAR and the EIC”

The gluon distribution function grows with lower and lower momentum fraction x very fast. As the total scattering cross section is bound by quantum mechanics, the raise of the gluon density has to be tamed, which is explained by gluon recombination under the color glass condensate (CGC) framework. A definitive discovery of nonlinear effects in QCD and as such the saturation regime would significantly improve our understanding of the nucleon structure and of nuclear interactions at high energy.

NPA Seminar, Taila Weiss, Yale, “Neutrino Mass Limit from Cyclotron Radiation Spectroscopy”

The neutrino mass scale plays a crucial role in both particle physics and cosmology, yet this scale is unknown. The neutrino masses distort the tritium beta-decay spectrum due to energy conservation. By measuring the tritium spectrum, KATRIN has placed the most precise model-independent limit on the neutrino mass scale, to date (mβ<0.8 eV). Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES), a technique pioneered by Project 8, has the potential to advance beyond KATRIN’s design sensitivity.

NPA Seminar, Ejiro Umaka, BNL, "sPHENIX Experiment at RHIC – Physics Program and Status”

sPHENIX is a new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) detector under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory required to complete RHIC’s scientific mission of probing the inner workings of Quark-Gluon Plasma. For that reason, sPHENIX will make precision measurements of jets, heavy flavor, and upsilon production. These measurements are possible due to the large hermetic acceptance, huge data rate, hadronic calorimetry, precision tracking of the sPHENIX detector.
This talk will discuss sPHENIX readiness for operations, its physics program, and construction status.

NPA Seminar, Kong Tu, Brookhaven, “Shining light through nuclear matter to see why they matter - a scientific journey to understand the visible world”

Understanding what our material world is made of has been an ultimate question for humankind for as long as our existence. Yet modern science and technology have enabled us to “see” objects at vastly different scales, from stars in distant galaxies to atomic particles, the fundamental origin of these matter and their strong interactions are far from understood. One of the most intriguing questions, the color confinement, is of particular interest, where quarks and gluons are forever clumped in the form of hadrons.

NPA Seminar, Sookhyun Lee, University of Michigan, “Probing proton structure and particle formation in high-energy particle collisions”

The Standard Model of particle physics describes fundamental forces in the universe – electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. The strong interactions between quarks and gluons via color charges is described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). High-energy particle accelerators enable precision studies of the Standard Model and beyond and, in particular, answering fundamental open questions in QCD, concerning the processes underlying complex particle formation and the nature of emergent QCD. Hadrons are composite color neutral states that comprise much of the visible world around us.

NPA Seminar, Alice Ohlson, Lund University, “Exploring the phase diagram of nuclear matter with heavy-ion collisions”

In ultrarelativistic collisions of heavy nuclei, such as those which take place in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the resulting state is so hot and dense that normal matter melts into its constituent parts, and quarks and gluons are no longer confined into hadrons. Known as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), this matter occupies the high-temperature and high-density regime of the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

NPA Seminar, Austin Baty, Rice University, “Jets and trillion-degree matter: studying QCD at multiple scales”

The theory of the strong nuclear force - Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) - describes the interactions between fundamental particles known as quarks and gluons. In this talk, I will explain how the strong nature of the QCD interaction results in phenomena having unique and intriguing properties. One such example is the creation of a hot, dense form of matter that behaves like a ‘perfect liquid,’ known as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), in collisions of high-energy nuclei. Another QCD phenomenon is the fragmentation of high-momentum quarks and gluons into streams of particles known as jets.

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