Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of October 30th through November 6th, 2011
Monday, October 31st, 2011
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- TBD
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 2317 Engineering Hall
- Speaker: Christopher Chen, UC-Berkely
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Linear social interactions models
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Steven Durlauf, UW Department of Economics
- Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of recent efforts by economists to understand social influences on economic behavior. The talk will emphasize the difficulties involved in uncovering evidence of social forces from observational data. Links to the growing literature on social networks will be made.
- Host: Clint Sprott
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Approaching the string landscape, in principle and in practice
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Jim Halverson, University of Pennsylvania
- Abstract: Though string theory provides a unified framework for physics which generically gives rise to gauge theories and quantum gravity, the existence of a landscape of string vacua makes it difficult to make contact with our world, even in principle. Solving the problem would ultimately require having a complete understanding of string theoretic moduli spaces, perhaps including dynamics, but the appropriate first steps are unclear. In this talk I will discuss three approaches to the problem. I will discuss generic issues of computing physical effects across the landscape by casting them into the language of diophantine equations and relating to Hilbert's 10th problem. I will then discuss phenomenological implications of a class of gauge theories very strongly motivated by string theory, including constraints on chiral matter which are necessary for string consistency but apparently do not appear in field theory. If time permits, I also plan to discuss important connections between non-perturbative effects, gauge theories, and moduli space that are crucial for understanding the landscape.
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
- Department Meeting
- Time: 12:15 pm
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Chiral superconductivity from repulsive interactions in doped graphene
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Rahul Nandkishore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Abstract: We present a model wherein repulsive interactions unambiguously lead to superconductivity with enhanced Tc. The superconducting state is the chiral d + id superconducting state, which has no known experimental realizations. Intriguingly, our model has a natural realization in strongly doped graphene. We consider graphene that is doped to the M point of the Brilliouin zone, where the Fermi surface nesting and the divergent density of states can produce interaction driven instabilities to exotic phases with high energy scales. Analyzing the competition between various ordering tendencies within a renormalisation group framework, we find that the leading instability is to d-wave superconductivity, for any choice of weak repulsive interactions. The dx2-y2 and dxy superconducting states have the same critical temperature Tc . Analysis of the competition of these orders below Tc reveals that both orders co-exist to produce d + id superconductivity.
- Host: Chubukov
- Graduate Introductory Seminar
- Astrophysics II: Experimental Astro/Space Physics
- Time: 5:30 pm
- Place: 2223 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: McCammon, Timbie
Friday, November 4th, 2011
- Cosmology Journal Club
- An Informal discussion about a broad variety of arXiv papers related to Cosmology
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Place: 5242 Chamberlin Hall
- Abstract: Please visit the following link for more details:
http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/journal/index.html
Please feel free to bring your lunch!
If you have questions or comments about this journal club, would like to propose a topic or volunteer to introduce a paper, please email Le Zhang (lzhang263@wisc.edu) - Host: Peter Timbie
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Search for new non-standard decay modes of SM-like Higgs at the LHC
- Time: 2:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Jinrui Huang, University of California, Irvine
- Abstract: We present strategies of searching for supersymmetric non-standard decays of Standard Model (SM)-like Higgs bosons (h2) at Large Hadron Collider (LHC), motivated by ''Dark Light Higgs'' (DLH) scenario. The DLH sccenario represents a limit of the nearly-Peccei-Quinn-symmetric Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, where there naturally co-exist two light singlet-like particles: a scalar (h1), a pseudoscalar (a1), and a light singlino-like DM candidate (chi_1), all with masses of order 10 GeV or below. In this scenario, the SM-like Higgs bosons typically decay dominantly into a pair of neutralinos, allowing themselves to be as light as below 100 GeV. We systematically study the searches of both the SM-like and the light Higgs bosons at the LHC, using the supersymmetric non-standard decay chain: h2 -> chi_1 chi_2, chi_2 -> chi_1 (h1, a1) with the h1 or a1 further decaying into a pair of fermions (including diMuon, diTau and b bbar, etc).
- Physics Department Colloquium
- No Colloquium