Undergraduate

Special Seminar: Shelly Lesher, University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, "Evidence-Based Inclusive Mentoring Practices"

Mentoring of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers is an important part of any scientists’ career. Research has shown that a good mentoring relationship can be one of the most important factors in determining students’ persistence in graduate school and recruitment of underrepresented students into the STEMM community. Although the importance of mentorship is understood, very few faculty have ever participated in a mentor training program and few structured training events are provided, especially for academics early in their career.

NPA Seminar, Flavio Cavanna, FERMILAB and University of L’Aquila, "The path of the DUNE Experiment at a turning point."

Getting there! DUNE with two 17kt LAr TPC Far Detector (FD1-FD2) modules, a Near Detector Complex and a Neutrino Beam with an intensity of 1.2 MW is well on its way to start physics in 2028 at SURF (SD). Mass Ordering and sensitivity to Maximal CPV - the initial goals of the flagship Long-Baseline (LBL) Neutrino Program - are within reach.  The time has come to define a strategy to achieve the ambitious ultimate precision in the LBL physics goals and possibly further expand the DUNE science scope into the low-energy domain of rare underground physics and BSM searches.

Dissertation Defense: Hannah Bossi, Yale University, "Novel Uses of Machine Learning for Differential Jet Quenching Measurements at the LHC"

At sufficiently high temperatures and pressures, QCD matter becomes a hot and dense deconfined medium known as the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Collisions of relativistic heavy-ions are used to recreate the QGP, providing a rich laboratory for exploring the mysteries of the strong interaction. The intrinsic and dynamic properties of the QGP are probed with jets, narrow cones of particles resulting from the scattering of quarks and gluons with a high momentum transfer.

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.

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