Sydney Spring School 2022

30 Nov 2022, 09:15 → 2 Dec 2022, 20:20 Australia/Sydney

SNH3001 (University of Sydney)

Archil Kobakhidze, Chia-Ling Hsu (University of Sydney), Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney), Yevgeny Stadnik (Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo)

The 3rd Sydney Spring School on Particle Physics and Cosmology will be held between 30th November - 2nd December directly before The Dark Side of the Universe Conference 2022. The event is hosted by the Sydney Consortium for Particle Physics and Cosmology (Sydney CPPC) and held at The University of Sydney. The lectures will also be broadcast via Zoom for hybrid participation in case of positive COVID cases or other issues.

The school is aimed at graduate students and young postdocs. The following topics will be covered:

1. Cosmology
2. Dark matter
3. Particle physics anomalies
4. Neutrino astrophysics

Confirmed lecturers:  Jenni Adams, Pippa Cole, Will DeRocco, Ulrik Egede, Theresa Fruth, Yann Mambrini, Yevgeny Stadnik

Participation in the school is free, but registration is required for catering purposes.

The school will be held in seminar room Room 3001 in the Sydney Nanoscience Hub on the main Camperdown campus: see here for instructions. The room is directly on your right when you walk up the main steps of the building.

On-site Wifi information (in case Eduroam does not work):

Username: Spring School
Passcode: 59093234

 

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/610935631

Wednesday, 30 November

1 Opening/Introductions

2 Dark matter 1

Speaker: Yann MAMBRINI

11:00 Coffee break

3 Dark matter 2

Speaker: Yann MAMBRINI

12:20 Lunch

4 Flavour anomalies 1

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

Sydney30Nov2022.pdf

5 Flavour anomalies 2

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

15:20 Coffee break

6 Experimental techniques for dark matter detection

Speaker: Theresa Fruth

DirectDetection_SpringSchool2022.pdf

7 Discussion

Thursday, 1 December

8 Dark matter 3

Speaker: Yann MAMBRINI

11:00 Coffee break

9 Flavour physics 3

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

EOS-tutorial.ipynb

Go to https://colab.research.google.com/ and load the notebook attached to the agenda. EOS documentation can be foun at https://eos.github.io/doc/index.html.

12:20 Lunch

10 Neutrino astrophysics 1

Speaker: Jenni Adams (University of Canterbury)

11 Neutrino astrophysics 2

Speaker: Jenni Adams (University of Canterbury)

15:20 Coffee break

12 Phenomenology of ultralight scalar dark matter

Speaker: Dr Yevgeny Stadnik (The University of Sydney)

Stadnik_Sydney_Spring_CPP_School_2022-Nov-Dec.pdf

13 Discussion

Friday, 2 December

14 Neutrino astrophysics

Speaker: Jenni Adams (University of Canterbury)

11:00 Coffee break

15 Primordial black holes

Speaker: Pippa Cole

12:20 Lunch

16 Axions

Speaker: Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney)

17 Phenomenology of the companion-axion model

We study the phenomenology of the ‘companion-axion model’ consisting of two coupled QCD axions. The second axion is required to rescue the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong-CP problem from the effects of colored gravitational instantons. We investigate here the combined phenomenology of axion-axion and axionphoton interactions, recasting present and future single-axion bounds onto the companion-axion parameter
space. Most remarkably, we predict that future axion searches with haloscopes and helioscopes may well discover two QCD axions, perhaps even within the same experiment

18 Decaying warm dark matter

During the recent years, decaying dark matter models have received renewed interest as proposed solutions to the current cosmological tensions, mainly due to their flexible expansion histories and clustering properties. While much focus has been on decaying cold dark matter, in this talk, I will present our recent work on decaying warm dark matter based on our recent preprint arXiv:2205.13628. Decaying warm dark matter generalises its cold counterpart, and interpolates between a wide range of cosmological models, admitting considerable customisability with few model parameters. Among other things, I will present results from a comprehensive MCMC analysis, evaluating the consequence of the model on the Hubble and 𝜎8 tensions. Lastly, I emphasise the power of agnosticism with respect to the underlying particle physics realisation and discuss applications to majorons and neutrino decays, both of which can be described as decaying warm dark matter.

19 Sensitivity of Dark Matter-Nucleus Interactions to Nuclear Structure

Non-relativistic effective field theory (NREFT) is one approach used for describing the interaction of WIMPS with ordinary matter. Among other factors, these interactions are expected to be affected by the structure of the atomic nuclei in the target. The sensitivity of the nuclear response components of the WIMP-nucleus scattering amplitude is investigated using shell model calculations for $^{19}$F, $^{23}$Na, $^{28, 29, 30}$Si, $^{40}$Ar, $^{127}$I, $^{70,72,73,74,76}$Ge and $^{128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136}$Xe. Resulting integrated nuclear response values are shown to be sensitive to some specifics of the nuclear structure calculations. The potential uncertainties that may arise from the nuclear components of WIMP-nucleus scattering amplitudes due to nuclear structure theory and modelling are thus highlighted.

15:20 Coffee break

20 Stellar Probes of BSM Physics

Speaker: William DeRocco

21 Pub dinner and drinks