February 4, 2008 (Monday) Gabriella Sciolla, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 11, 2008 (Monday) Graham Kribs, University of Oregon
February 25, 2008 (Monday) Patrick J. Fox, Fermilab
March 3, 2008 (Monday) Hock Seng Goh, UC, Berkeley
March 10, 2008 (Monday) Leslie Rosenberg, UW, Seattle
March 14, 2008 Rescheduled to 4/4/08 (Friday) Maxim Pospelov, Victoria University
March 17, 2008 (Monday) Adam Martin, Yale
Directional detection of dark matter can provide unambiguous observation of dark matter (DM) interactions even in presence of insidious backgrounds. The DM-TPC collaboration is developing a detector with the goal of measuring the direction and sense ("head-tail") of nuclear recoils produced in spin-dependent DM interactions. The detector consists of a low pressure TPC with optical readout filled with CF4 gas at low pressure. A collision between a WIMP with a gas molecule results in a nucleus recoil of about 1 mm. The measurement of the energy loss along the recoil allows us to determine the sense and the direction of the recoil. Results from a prototype detector operated in a low-energy neutron beam clearly demonstrate the suitability of this approach to measure directionality. In particular, the first observation of the "head-tail" effect for low-energy neutrons had been recently published by our Collaboration. A full-scale (~1m3) module is now being built. This detector, which will be operated underground in 2008-2009, will allow us to set limits on spin-dependent Dark Matter interactions using a directional detector.
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
I will describe how the intriguing pattern of quark and lepton masses may be explained through quantum effects. In particular I will describe a model where only the top has a tree-level mass and loops involving heavy states generate the lighter fermion masses. A simple renormalizable model will generate the fermion mass hierarchies through loop factors."
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
In this talk, I will discuss two aspects of the left-right twin Higgs model, one from model building and one from phenomenology. From the model building side, it is shown that the fine tuning can be improved by introducing a tree level quartic coupling that preserve twin parity. From phenomenology side, it was pointed out that although many LHC-hopeful signatures are predicted by the model, these signatures disappear if one particular parameter in the model is set to zero. I will discuss this special case with the assumption of relatively light right handed neutrino.
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle whose existence would explain the baffling absence of CP violation in the strong interactions. It's properties in addition make it a good dark-matter candidate. Even though dark-matter axions would make up the overwhelming majority of mass in the universe, they are extraordinarily difficult to detect. We have developed a detector of dark-matter axions that is at heart an exquisitely sensitive detector of electromagnetic radiation. This seminar will briefly review the role of axions in particle and astrophysics, and will describe the progress we have made in the experimental search.
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall
Refreshments served at 3:45
New strong interactions at the LHC may exhibit a richer structure than a rescaled version of QCD at the electroweak scale. This departure from rescaled QCD is required to construct scenarios of strong interactions compatible with electroweak constraints. In this talk we use a simple framework, based on a 5D model with a modification of AdS geometry in the infrared, to parameterize viable scenarios and we propose two particularly interesting cases. Within these benchmark points we explore the discovery of vector and axial resonances in the Drell-Yan, associated production and vector boson fusion channels.
4:00 pm, 472 Willamette Hall