Colloquia 2016 Spring

FSU Physics Colloquia are held Thursdays at 3:45-4:45 in UPL 101. A reception will precede the colloquium beginning at 3:30.

Check back often as the schedule is being continually updated.

  • 1/7/16
    • Speaker Wan Kyu Park
    • Affiliation Univ. of Illinois
    • Title Urbana/Champaign Samarium Hexaboride an Intriguing Topological Insulator
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  • 1/14/16
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  • 1/21/16
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  • 1/28/16
    • Speaker Svetlana Pevnitskaya
    • Affiliation FSU Economics
    • Title Game Theory and Nash Equilibrium
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  • 2/4/15
    • Speaker Rob Fesen
    • Affiliation Dartmouth
    • Title The Supernova - Supernova Remnant Connection
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  • 2/11/16
    • Speaker Alice Bean
    • Affiliation Kansas
    • Title Engaging the public on climate change issues
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  • 2/18/16
    • Speaker Guy Savard
    • Affiliation ANL
    • Title New facilities and techniques to access r-process nuclei
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  • 2/25/16
    • Speaker Michael marder
    • Affiliation UT Austin
    • Title Hydrofracturing: Optimism, Pessimism, and Scaling Functions
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  • 3/3/16
    • Speaker Eduardo Garcia
    • Affiliation Physics Institute, Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico
    • Title Hyperfine anomaly in francium
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  • 3/10/16
    • Speaker SPRING BREAK
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  • 3/17/16
    • Speaker Kevin Huffenberger
    • Affiliation FSU Physics
    • Title Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology from the Cosmic Microwave Background
    • Abstract The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the afterglow of Big Bang, gives us a snapshot of the early universe. Because temperature and polarization fluctuations record information about cosmological parameters, the CMB has become a cornerstone of modern cosmology. Curl-type (or "B-mode") polarization is particularly interesting because it probes gravity waves during inflation, and gives inflation's energy scale. However, emission from the Milky Way is a serious contaminant. I will present a new method for determining the least contaminated directions in the sky, and apply it to data from the Planck mission. We can also use the CMB as a backlight to learn about structure and astrophysical objects. As an example, I will show how Sunyaev-Zeldovich scattering of CMB photons can be used to measure the mass of distant galaxy clusters. Gravitational lensing of the CMB by nearby structure is also a powerful tool to probe the expansion history of the universe and even measure the mass of the neutrino. I will discuss future science directions for the field, including the strategy and expectations for the recently-funded Advanced ACTpol project, and look forward to fourth-generation ground-based CMB observatories, dubbed CMB-S4
  • 3/24/16
    • Speaker Rocky Kolb
    • Affiliation University of Chicago
    • Title Hagopian lecture: Dark Matter: The WIMP Decade
    • Abstract Astronomical evidence that most of the mass of the universe is dark has been around for over 80 years. The most popular explanation for the nature of dark matter is that it is a new type of Weakly-Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) that is a relic of the big-bang. I will motivate the WIMP hypothesis and describe present discovery efforts. If dark matter is a WIMP it can't hide forever-this is the decade that the WIMP will be discovered or the hypothesis discarded
  • 3/31/15
    • Speaker Wei Cui
    • Affiliation Purdue
    • Title Hunting for Cosmic Baryons
    • Abstract One of the triumphs of the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) theory is that its predicted abundances of primordial isotopes agree with the measured values. Moreover, the predicted baryonic mass is accounted for at high redshifts (i.e., in the early universe) observationally. Going towards low redshifts, however, only a fraction of the BBN baryons are detected; this is the "missing baryon" problem. The common wisdom is that those baryons are not missing, but are hidden in some warm-hot gas of very low density, which is difficult to detect; cosmological simulations support this view. Such gas may be "seen" through the emission or absorption lines of its highly ionized constituents (such as helium- or hydrogenlike oxygen). For that, an X-ray spectrometer of high throughput and high resolution would be required. I will describe the development of quantum microcalorimeters for X-ray spectroscopy. I will also briefly discuss the design of a satellite experiment that employs the microcalorimeters to carry out a survey of warm-hot gas in the universe, addressing a wide range of important issues in astrophysics, including the "missing baryon" problem.
  • 4/7/16
    • Speaker David Tanner
    • Affiliation University of Florida
    • Title Advanced LIGO and GW150914
    • Abstract The LIGO collaboration completed the Advanced LIGO detectors more than a year ago, with an official dedication taking place at Hanford, WA, in May 2015, transitioning the facilities from a construction project to observatories. By August 2015, the two detectors were working well, only a bit short of their designed sensitivity (as is normal at the early stage of such a complex project). The laboratories were scheduled to begin an observing run in late September 2015 and to continue this run into January 2016. In the early morning of 14 September 2015, while conducting engineering studies of the detectors, a strong transient signal was observed. Online analysis flagged this event 3 minutes after it was received. In February 2016, the collaboration announced the observation by LIGO of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger. The University of Florida built the input optics for Advanced LIGO and has been carrying out online and off-line data analysis for generic gravitational wave transients in the LIGO data stream. This, the detection, and the current status of LIGO science will be discussed.
  • 4/14/16
    • Speaker Poster session Student Poster session Winston Roberts
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  • 4/21/16
    • Speaker Awards Ceremony Awards Ceremony Eva Crowdis
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