Events Archive

Jan
12
2012
Certainty And Uncertainty In Dark Matter Searches
Departing from the context of CoGeNT and COUPP, two direct searches for WIMP dark matter, we will inspect the recent landscape of anomalies observed by these and several other detectors. The aim of this talk is to communicate an appreciation for the subtleties inherent to experimental efforts in this field, and for the considerable difficulties that await for those trying to make sense of WIMP search observations (or lack thereof).
Jan
09
2012
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011: Dan Shechtman and the discovery of quasicrystals
Dec
15
2011
Verifying the no-hair property of massive compact objects with intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals in Advanced LIGO
The detection of gravitational waves from the inspiral of a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole into an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) promises an entirely new look at strong field gravitational physics. Gravitational waves from these intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals (IMRIs), systems with mass ratios from 10:1 to 100:1, may be detectable at rates of up to a few tens per year and will encode a signature of the central body's spacetime. Direct observation of the spacetime will allow us to use the "no-hair" theorem of general relativity to determine if the IMBH is a Kerr black hole (or some more exotic object, e.g. a boson star). In this talk, I will discuss the...
Dec
15
2011
Nanoscale Switching Behavior and Electronic Properties of Ultrathin Ferroelectric Structures
Dec
07
2011
"The biggest little molecules in Nature"
This colloquium will discuss recent theoretical predictions and experimental confirmation of two unusual classes of ultra-long-range molecules. One class involves a highly-excited Rydberg electron that manages to bind a distant ground state atom at thousands of Bohr radii. The other class involves the bizarre Efimov effect for three or four ground state atoms with resonant interactions. Implications for the behavior of ultracold quantum gases will be addressed.
Dec
07
2011
Analyzing 3-D stochastic dynamics in live cells
Advances in microscopy have enabled measurements in living cells, but there is a wealth of biologically relevant dynamical information contained in experimental data that has not been utilized.  Existing analysis methods either coarse grain too much or cannot overcome some technical challenges inherent to in vivo measurements. The importance of more fully utilizing information “hidden” in noisy 3D in vivo measurements will be emphasized in several problems.  In this talk, I demonstrate how recent advances in time series analysis can be used to estimate stochastic differential equations (SDEs) and construct hypothesis tests checking the...
Dec
06
2011
Analyzing 3-D stochastic dynamics in live cells
Advances in microscopy have enabled measurements in living cells, but there is a wealth of biologically relevant dynamical information contained in experimental data that has not been utilized.  Existing analysis methods either coarse grain too much or cannot overcome some technical challenges inherent to in vivo measurements. The importance of more fully utilizing information “hidden” in noisy 3D in vivo measurements will be emphasized in several problems.  In this talk, I demonstrate how recent advances in time series analysis can be used to estimate stochastic differential equations (SDEs) and construct hypothesis tests checking the consistency...
Dec
01
2011
NMR study of the dynamics of ³He atoms in dilution ³He-⁴He solid solutions
Nov
30
2011
Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis: IT from BIT, from BITs in IT
We consider the Universe to be fundamentally quantum and statistical, the many-paths/many-worlds information-theoretic story. This lecture uses Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis, CITA, as a unifying theme to explore the vast sweep  of our current ideas of the Universe and the experiments we use to probe them, ranging from the ultra-early beginnings to our far-future fate. I describe the intimate entanglement of theory with precision "first-light"  and other cosmic data, in particular from the satellite Planck and the Andes-based ACT. Such data are the BITs in IT informing us of the physics that defines the BIT of the Universe...
Nov
17
2011
Deriving reduced models for plasma physics via Dirac’s theory of constrained Hamiltonian systems
We present a Hamiltonian derivation of a class of reduced models in plasma physics obtained by imposing dynamical constraints on a parent Hamiltonian model. We will consider MHD equations and Maxwell-Vlasov equations as parent models. It is shown that the Poisson bracket associated with these reduced models is the Dirac bracket obtained from the Poisson bracket of the parent model.

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