KICP Seminars & Colloquia, Current and Future
Today's Seminars
Upcoming Seminars

Seminar schedule for Current (Fall 2018) & Future Quarters
October 3, 2018
Wednesday colloquium		Silvia Galli
IAP		Cosmological results from the final data release of the Planck satellite   [Abstract | Video]
October 5, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Christiane Stefanie Lorenz
University of Oxford		Neutrino cosmology and large scale structure   [Abstract]
October 10, 2018
Wednesday colloquium		Brian Keating
UC San Diego		Fundamental Physics with the Simons Observatory   [Abstract | Video]
October 12, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Simeon Bird
UC Riverside		Massive Neutrinos, Galaxy Clusters and the Lyman-alpha Forest   [Abstract]
October 17, 2018
Astronomy Colloquium		Jay Strader
Michigan State University		Compact Binaries and the Origin of Millisecond Pulsars   [Abstract]
October 19, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Sara M. Simon
University of Michigan		Precision Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background from Chile   [Abstract]
October 24, 2018
Astronomy Colloquium		Keith Hawkins
University of Texas at Austin		Galactic Archaeology in the Gaia Era   [Abstract]
October 31, 2018
Astronomy Colloquium		Jonathan Lunine
Cornell University		Juno's Hunt for Jovian Deep Oxygen, and the Implications for Giant Planet Formation   [Abstract]
November 2, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Louis Strigari
Texas A&M University		Astrophysical applications of coherent neutrino scattering   [Abstract]
November 7, 2018
Wednesday colloquium		Stephon Alexander
Brown University		Dark Energy: The Cosmological Constant in the Skies   [Abstract | Video]
November 9, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Jeremy Sakstein
University of Pennsylvania		Superfluids and the Cosmological Constant Problem   [Abstract]
November 14, 2018
Open Group seminar		Jorgos Papadomanolakis
Lorentz Institute		The Tachyonic Instability in Scalar-Tensor Theories   [Abstract]
November 14, 2018
Astronomy Colloquium		Jennifer Yee
Harvard University		Microlensing Perspectives on Cool Planet Populations   [Abstract]
November 16, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Lina Necib
Caltech		Dark Matter in Disequilibrium and Implications for Direct Detection   [Abstract]
November 16, 2018
Open Group seminar		Garrison Lehman
CfA		N-body Cosmology with Abacus   [Abstract]
November 28, 2018
Astronomy Colloquium		Joe Hennawi
University of California - Santa Barbara		TBA
November 30, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Surjeet Rajendran
UC Berkeley		Low Energy Probes of Particle Physics
December 5, 2018
Wednesday colloquium		Colin Bischoff
University of Cincinnati		New Results from BICEP/Keck   [Abstract]
December 7, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Kimberly Boddy
Johns Hopkins University		Searching for Dark Matter Interactions in Cosmology
December 12, 2018
Wednesday colloquium		Matias Zaldarriaga
Institute for Advanced Study		TBD
December 14, 2018
Friday noon seminar		Stephen Portillo
University of Washington		Counting Stars: Developing Probabilistic Cataloging for Crowded Fields   [Abstract]
January 9, 2019
Wednesday colloquium		Michael Turner
KICP		How Many Numbers does it take to describe the Universe
January 16, 2019
Astronomy Colloquium
TBA
January 25, 2019
Friday noon seminar		Noah Kurinsky
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory		New Directions for Direct Detection of MeV-Scale Dark Matter
January 30, 2019
Astronomy Colloquium		Ian Crossfield
MIT		TBA
February 8, 2019
Friday noon seminar		Kris Pardo
Princeton University		Testing Self-Interacting Dark Matter with Galaxy Warps
February 13, 2019
Astronomy Colloquium		Roger Blandford
Stanford University		TBA
February 20, 2019
Wednesday colloquium		Hirosi Ooguri
Caltech & Kavli IPMU		to be determined
February 22, 2019
Friday noon seminar		Mathew S Madhavacheril
Princeton University		kSZ Cosmology without the optical depth degeneracy
February 27, 2019
Astronomy Colloquium		Mansi Kasliwal
Caltech		TBA
March 13, 2019
Astronomy Colloquium		Mark Vogelsberger
MIT		TBA
 
COLLOQUIA
KICP Colloquia and Astronomy & Astrophysics Colloquia: Unless otherwise noted, all talks are held in ERC 161 at 3:30 PM on Wednesdays. A reception will be held following the talk in the ERC 401 (KICP Colloquia) and in Hubble Lounge (ERC 501) (Astronomy & Astrophysics Colloquia).
October 3, 2018
October 10, 2018
October 17, 2018
October 24, 2018
October 31, 2018
November 7, 2018
November 14, 2018
November 28, 2018
December 5, 2018
December 12, 2018
January 9, 2019
January 16, 2019
January 30, 2019
February 13, 2019
February 20, 2019
February 27, 2019
March 13, 2019

  • October 3, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    Cosmological results from the final data release of the Planck satellite
    Silvia Galli, IAP

    Video
    Planck is an ESA satellite aimed at the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background. This year, the Planck collaboration has released its final data and results. In this talk, I will describe the main results on cosmology from the mission, highlighting the changes with respect to previous releases, the agreement with other cosmological probes and the unsolved questions opened for the future.
  • October 10, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    Fundamental Physics with the Simons Observatory
    Brian Keating, UC San Diego

    Brian Keating
    Video
    Brian Keating
    The Simons Observatory is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. I will describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate its design, and forecast its performance. The Simons Observatory will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background with arcminute resolution over approximately 40% of the sky in six frequency bands: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. In its initial phase, three small-aperture (0.5-meter diameter) telescopes and one large-aperture (6-meter diameter) telescope will be fielded. These instruments will host a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometer detectors. I will discuss some of the key science goals of the Simons Observatory, including the characterization of primordial fluctuations, determination of the number of relativistic species, and measuring the mass of neutrinos. I will also discuss other tests of fundamental physics -- some of which may be best measured using Cosmic Microwave Background observations such as the ones we are embarking upon.
  • October 17, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    Compact Binaries and the Origin of Millisecond Pulsars
    Jay Strader, Michigan State University

    It is well-established that fast-spinning millisecond pulsars are neutron stars recycled through accretion from binary companions. For most millisecond pulsars the accretion process has permanently ceased, and they are in binary systems with low-mass white dwarf companions. Follow-up observations of newly discovered gamma-ray sources from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope have revealed a substantial population of "spider" millisecond pulsars with hydrogen-rich companions; these systems had mostly been missed in radio pulsar surveys. I will discuss the properties of neutron stars in these binaries and and the implications for the formation and evolution of millisecond pulsars.
  • October 24, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    Galactic Archaeology in the Gaia Era
    Keith Hawkins, University of Texas at Austin

    One of the key objectives of modern astrophysics is to understand the formation and evolution galaxies. In this regard, the Milky Way is a fantastic testing ground for our theories of galaxy formation. However, dissecting the assembly history of the Galaxy, requires a detailed mapping of the structural, dynamical chemical, and age distributions of its stellar populations. Recently, we have entered an era of large spectroscopic and astrometric surveys, which has begun to pave the way for the exciting advancements in this field. Combining data from the many multi-object spectroscopic surveys, which are already underway, and the rich dataset from Gaia will undoubtedly be the way forward in order to disentangle the full chemo-dynamical history of our Galaxy. In this talk, I will discuss my current work in Galactic archaeology and how large spectroscopic surveys have been used to dissect the structure of our Galaxy. I will also explore the future of Galactic archaeology through chemical cartography.
  • October 31, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    Juno's Hunt for Jovian Deep Oxygen, and the Implications for Giant Planet Formation
    Jonathan Lunine, Cornell University

    The carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) in giant planets is an important indicator of processes in disks that lead to planet formation. However, obtaining this ratio in Jupiter and Saturn is far more difficult than in hot exo-Jupiters, because water condenses out of the visible atmospheres of the solar system's two giants. For Jupiter, the Galileo Probe almost got us there, but Juno data are required to close in on the deep oxygen abundance. For other planetary systems, JWST will provide very high quality transit spectra that will allow us to see the carbon- and oxygen-bearing species in many giant planets around other stars.
  • November 7, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    Dark Energy: The Cosmological Constant in the Skies
    Stephon Alexander, Brown University

    Video
    After a pedagogical review of the cosmological constant problem and status of Dark Energy, I will present some new ideas, progress and challenges to account for the current acceleration of the universe and the smallness of the cosmological constant.
  • November 14, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    Microlensing Perspectives on Cool Planet Populations
    Jennifer Yee, Harvard University

    Microlensing is uniquely capable of studying planets across a wide range of masses at a few AU from their host stars. At the lower masses, these planets are difficult to impossible to find with other techniques. I will discuss recent results in microlensing suggesting a turnover in the planet mass ratio function around 10^-4, i.e. that planets with mass ratios similar to Neptune are the most abundant at separations probed by microlensing. I will also discuss microlensing constraints on the free-floating planet population. Finally, I will discuss how current and future microlensing surveys, including WFIRST, will advance our understanding of cool planet populations.
  • November 28, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    Joe Hennawi, University of California - Santa Barbara

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:30 PM, Hubble Lounge
  • December 5, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    New Results from BICEP/Keck
    Colin Bischoff, University of Cincinnati

    Note: Reception at 4:30 PM in the ERC 401.

    The BICEP/Keck series of telescopes make up a long-running program of small-aperture Cosmic Microwave Background polarimeters observing from the South Pole. I will describe new results that incorporate Keck Array observations from 2015, including our first 220 GHz data. These results improve the upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio to r < 0.07 at 95% confidence and we explore the robustness of this constraint to complications in the dust foreground, instrumental systematics, and other variations in the analysis. The next steps forward in sensitivity will include 2016-2018 data from BICEP3 and Keck Array, followed by the four-telescope BICEP Array which will begin observing in 2020.
  • December 12, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    TBD
    Matias Zaldarriaga, Institute for Advanced Study

    Note: Reception at 4:30 PM in the ERC 401.
  • January 9, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    How Many Numbers does it take to describe the Universe
    Michael Turner, KICP
  • January 16, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    ,

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:45 PM, Hubble Lounge
  • January 30, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    Ian Crossfield, MIT

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:45 PM, Hubble Lounge
  • February 13, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    Roger Blandford, Stanford University

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:45 PM, Hubble Lounge
  • February 20, 2019 | 3:00 PM | ERC 161 | Wednesday colloquium
    to be determined
    Hirosi Ooguri, Caltech & Kavli IPMU

    Note: Reception at 4:30 PM in the ERC 401.
  • February 27, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    Mansi Kasliwal, Caltech

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:45 PM, Hubble Lounge
  • March 13, 2019 | 3:30 PM | ERC 161 | Astronomy Colloquium
    TBA
    Mark Vogelsberger, MIT

    Note: Refreshments served at 4:45 PM, Hubble Lounge

 
FRIDAY NOON SEMINARS
KICP Friday noon seminar: Unless otherwise noted, all talks are held in ERC 401 at Noon on Fridays.
October 5, 2018
October 12, 2018
October 19, 2018
November 2, 2018
November 9, 2018
November 16, 2018
November 30, 2018
December 7, 2018
December 14, 2018
January 25, 2019
February 8, 2019
February 22, 2019

  • October 5, 2018 | 3:00 PM | ERC 576 | Friday noon seminar
    Neutrino cosmology and large scale structure
    Christiane Stefanie Lorenz, University of Oxford

    In this talk, I will present studies of the model-dependence of cosmological neutrino mass constraints. In particular, I will focus on two phenomenological parameterizations of time-varying dark energy (early dark energy and barotropic dark energy) that can exhibit degeneracies with the cosmic neutrino background over extended periods of cosmic time. Moreover, I will show how the combination of multiple probes across cosmic time can help to distinguish between the two components. In addition, I will discuss how neutrino mass constraints can change in extended neutrino mass models, and how current tensions between low- and high-redshift cosmological data might be affected in these models. Finally, I will discuss whether lensing magnification and other relativistic effects that affect the galaxy distribution contain additional information about dark energy and neutrino parameters, and how much parameter constraints can be biased when these effects are neglected.
  • October 12, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Massive Neutrinos, Galaxy Clusters and the Lyman-alpha Forest
    Simeon Bird, UC Riverside

    I'll present new efficient and accurate techniques for including massive neutrinos in N-body simulations, using a linear response (to the cold dark matter) approximation for the neutrinos. Then I'll talk about the potential for massive neutrinos to resolve some cosmological tensions within CMB observations galaxy clusters. Finally, I'll discuss how to detect features in quasar spectra using machine learning.
  • October 19, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 576 | Friday noon seminar
    Precision Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background from Chile
    Sara M. Simon, University of Michigan

    Image credit: Jon Ward
    The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides unparalleled views into the early universe and its later evolution. Recent and ongoing experiments have contributed to our understanding of neutrinos, dark energy, and dark matter through measurements of large scale structure imprinted on the CMB and constrained the conditions in the early universe, tightly restricting inflationary and other cosmological models through measurements of CMB polarization. Next-generation CMB experiments like Simons Observatory will further constrain the sum of the neutrino masses and number of relativistic species, expand our understanding of dark energy and dark matter, and set new constraints on cosmological models describing the first moments of the universe. The polarization in the CMB is faint, so future experiments must be orders of magnitude more sensitive. Additionally, both polarized foregrounds from synchrotron and dust emission and systematic effects from the instruments can create spurious polarization signals. Characterizing and removing foregrounds requires wide frequency coverage, while systematic effects must be modeled, mitigated and calibrated at unprecedented levels. I will discuss several advances in instrumentation and analysis that will be critical for this leap in performance.
  • November 2, 2018 | 11:00 AM | PRC 201 | Friday noon seminar
    Astrophysical applications of coherent neutrino scattering
    Louis Strigari, Texas A&M University

    Neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering (CNS) is a long standing theoretical prediction of the Standard Model (SM), with experimental evidence for it just very recently being announced. CNS provides an important probe of physics beyond the SM, with a reach that can surpass the sensitivity of much larger scale detectors. In addition, it can open up a new window into neutrinoastrophysics, through studies of low energy neutrinos from the Sun, atmosphere, and supernovae. CNS is also vital for understanding and interpreting future particle dark matter searches. In this talk, I will discuss the prospects for learning about the nature of neutrinos and astrophysical sources from CNS detection, highlighting how astrophysical and terrestrial-based detections play important and complementary roles.
  • November 9, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 576 | Friday noon seminar
    Superfluids and the Cosmological Constant Problem
    Jeremy Sakstein, University of Pennsylvania

    The Lambda-CDM cosmological model is still the best-fit to current data, and numerous alternatives have recently been ruled out by the observation of gravitational waves and other small-scale probes. Theoretically, the cosmological constant (Lambda) suffers from a severe fine-tuning that needs to be understood in order for Lambda-CDM to be a satisfactory model. In this talk I will discuss a recent proposal for a model that may ameliorate the cosmological constant problem. In this model, a superfluid pervading the universe could counteract the large (unobserved) cosmological constant predicted by quantum mechanics. I will discuss the novel phenomenology predicted by the superfluid as well as future directions for testing this model.
  • November 16, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Dark Matter in Disequilibrium and Implications for Direct Detection
    Lina Necib, Caltech

    Using two realizations of the Milky Way from the FIRE simulation, we find that the kinematics of dark matter follows closely the kinematics of accreted stars from the same mergers. We use this correspondence to build an empirical local velocity distribution of dark matter, by analyzing the Gaia second data release coupled with the ninth release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and computing the velocity distribution of the accreted stars. We find that this velocity distribution is peaked at lower velocities than the generally assumed Maxwell Boltzmann distribution, due to the presence of a recent merger referred to as the Gaia Sausage, leading to a weakening of direct detection limits at dark matter masses less than 10 GeV.
  • November 30, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Low Energy Probes of Particle Physics
    Surjeet Rajendran, UC Berkeley
  • December 7, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Searching for Dark Matter Interactions in Cosmology
    Kimberly Boddy, Johns Hopkins University
  • December 14, 2018 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Counting Stars: Developing Probabilistic Cataloging for Crowded Fields
    Stephen Portillo, University of Washington

    The depth of next generation surveys poses a great data analysis challenge: these surveys will suffer from crowding, making their images difficult to deblend and catalog. Sources in crowded fields are extremely covariant with their neighbors and blending makes even the number of sources ambiguous. Probabilistic cataloging returns an ensemble of catalogs inferred from the image and can address these difficulties. We present the first optical probabilistic catalog, cataloging a crowded Sloan Digital Sky Survey r band image cutout from Messier 2. By comparing to a DAOPHOT catalog of the same image and a Hubble Space Telescope catalog of the same region, we show that our catalog ensemble goes more than a magnitude deeper than DAOPHOT. We also present an algorithm for reducing this catalog ensemble to a condensed catalog that is similar to a traditional catalog, except it explicitly marginalizes over source-source covariances and nuisance parameters. We also detail efforts to make probabilistic cataloging more computationally efficient and extend it beyond point sources to extended objects. Probabilistic cataloging takes significant computational resources, but its performance compared to existing software in crowded fields make it a enticing method to pursue further.
  • January 25, 2019 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    New Directions for Direct Detection of MeV-Scale Dark Matter
    Noah Kurinsky, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
  • February 8, 2019 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    Testing Self-Interacting Dark Matter with Galaxy Warps
    Kris Pardo, Princeton University
  • February 22, 2019 | 12:00 PM | ERC 401 | Friday noon seminar
    kSZ Cosmology without the optical depth degeneracy
    Mathew S Madhavacheril, Princeton University

 
SPECIAL SEMINARS


 
OPEN GROUP SEMINARS
November 14, 2018
November 16, 2018

  • November 14, 2018 | 11:30 AM | ERC 445 | Open Group seminar
    The Tachyonic Instability in Scalar-Tensor Theories
    Jorgos Papadomanolakis, Lorentz Institute

    In recent years the discovery of late-time cosmic acceleration triggered the creation of a landscape of extensions of General Relativity, aimed at providing a theoretical compelling mechanism. Now, with the wealth of current and upcoming observational data, it becomes imperative to find efficient ways to constrain these theories both from a theoretical as a data point of view. In this talk I will start by introducing the formalism of the Effective Field Theory of Dark Energy and Modify Gravity and will then proceed to employ it in order to study the theoretical stability of scalar extensions of gravity. I will pay special attention to the tachyonic instability, an instability seldom taken into account in the literature. This will yield powerful new constraints that severely impact the parameter space of gravitational theories. In the final part I will present how they impact the phenomenological (μ,Σ) parameter space, a result obtained by implementing the stability conditions in the Einstein Boltzmann solver EFTCAMB.
  • November 16, 2018 | 3:30 PM | ERC 401 | Open Group seminar
    N-body Cosmology with Abacus
    Garrison Lehman, CfA

    N-body simulations are the standard tool for modeling LCDM structure formation but are not without their drawbacks. For one, they are computationally expensive, requiring 10K+ GPU node-hours for large simulations; for another, they are only as accurate as their discrete "macroparticle" representation of dark matter allows. I'll discuss how we are tackling both of these problems with Abacus. Abacus is a N-body simulation code based on an exact decomposition of the near-field and far-field force, making it exceptionally accurate and fast. Using one dual-GPU node, Abacus can solve a supercomputer-sized N-body problem in a fraction of the node-hours of other codes while retaining significantly higher accuracy. I'll show some of the problems that survey collaborations are having with N-body accuracy and methodologies we are developing to address this.

 
THURSDAY LUNCH DISCUSSIONS
KICP's Thunch: KICP Cosmology Lunch (Thunch) Weekly on Thursdays, Noon, ERC 401A.

Please join us for an informal lunch discussion, led by KICP fellows, of recent news and papers in cosmology. Topics range from experiment and observations to theory in all areas of KICP science. To submit or view papers for this week's Thunch please visit the Thunch website.


 
ASTRONOMY TUESDAY SEMINARS


 
ASTRONOMY SPECIAL SEMINARS