29 April 2024 to 7 June 2024
Bernoulli Center
Europe/Zurich timezone

Generation, evolution, and observations of cosmological magnetic fields is a 6 week program at the Bernoulli Center (https://bernoulli.epfl.ch/) with the objective to combine experts and young researchers in different areas related to cosmological magnetic fields.

The program is divided in three 2-week meetings. The first week of each meeting consists on a workshop with plenary and contributed talks, and the second week of each meeting consists on open discussions and free time for the participants to discuss or work on collaborative or their own projects.

The Bernoulli center, located at the EPFL campus in Lausanne, provides open shared desk space for accepted participants.

Observations of gamma-ray blazars indicate the presence of intergalactic magnetic fields (IGMF) in the cosmic voids of the large scale structure (LSS) of our current observable Universe. Although their origin is still an open problem, they are possibly relics from the early Universe. New-generation gamma-ray and radio observatories, like the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, respectively, are expected to provide us with detailed measurements of IGMF in different elements of the LSS, including voids and filaments, and clarify the origin of the IGMF in voids.

The main objective of the program is to provide a comprehensive description of cosmological magnetic fields, from the different proposed mechanisms of magnetic field production in the early Universe (first meeting of the program) to their current and future observational probes (third meeting of the program), including BBN, CMB, and the LSS. The program will also review the prospects of combining astrophysical observations with the possible detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background to study primordial magnetic fields in a multi-messenger approach. The evolution of cosmological magnetic fields from their time of generation until the present time is the topic of the second meeting of the program.

Meetings

Primordial magnetogenesis: inflationary, axion-magnetogenesis, magnetic field production from phase transitions, and chiral anomalies (April 29-May 10)

Evolution of primordial magnetic fields: before, during, and after recombination (May 13-24)

Multi-messenger observations and observational constraints (May 27-June 7)

Please indicate in your registration which meetings you would like to attend and your preferred meeting topic. Registration is open (https://indico.cern.ch/event/1334236/registrations) and the deadline to register and submit an abstract (https://indico.cern.ch/event/1334236/abstracts/) is January 14th 2024.

There is no registration fee to participate in the program but registration is mandatory. Accepted participants will be notified shortly after the deadline.

Course

In addition to the meetings a course on "Simulations of early Universe magnetohydrodynamics" is offered during during the fourth week of the program (May 20-24). The course will cover some fundamentals of MHD theory with hands-on sessions to learn the basics of MHD simulations using the open-source Pencil Code (http://pencil-code.nordita.org/).

The 2 ECTS course is open to EPFL students (see website) and early-career researchers participating in the program (PhD students and postdocs). Senior researchers from other fields who are interested in learning MHD simulations are also welcome.

The teaching material for the course are available here. You need a password to access the material which you should have received on your email. If you don't have the password please contact one of the lecturers (Jennifer or Alberto).

The course will take place at a different location in the EPFL campus:

Financial support

Travel support might be available upon request, especially for young researchers. Please indicate in the registration the reason why you are applying for financial support. Decisions will be made shortly after the deadline.

Invited speakers:

  • Rafael Alves Batista (IFT Madrid)
  • Axel Brandenburg (Nordita)
  • Jens Chluba (JBCA Manchester)
  • Valerie Domcke (CERN)
  • Ruth Durrer (Geneva)
  • Francesc Ferrer (Washington St. Louis)
  • Daniel Figueroa (IFIC Valencia)
  • Fabio Finelli (INAF-OAS/INFN Bologna)
  • Juerg Froehlich (ETH Zuerich)
  • Tomohiro Fujita (Waseda)
  • Juan Garcia-Belido (IFT Madrid)
  • David Hosking (Princeton)
  • Karsten Jedamzik (remote) (Montpellier)
  • Michael Kachelriess (NTNU Trondheim)
  • Tina Kahniashvili (Carnegie Mellon)
  • Kohei Kamada (UCAS Hangzhou)
  • Kerstin Kunze (Salamanca)
  • Andrew Long (Rice University)
  • Manuel Meyer (Hamburg)
  • Kyohei Mukaida (KEK Tsukuba)
  • Daniela Paoletti (INAF-OAS/INFN Bologna)
  • Gabriella Piccinelli (UNAM)
  • Levon Pogosian (Simon Fraser)
  • Bharat Ratra (Kansas State)
  • Igor Rogachevskii (Ben-Gurion)
  • Paul Saffin (Nottingham)
  • Andrey Saveliev
  • Matthieu Schaller (Leiden)
  • Dmitri Semikoz (APC Paris)
  • Evangelos Sfakianakis (Case Western U.)
  • Mikhail Shaposhnikov (EPFL)
  • Guenter Sigl (Hamburg)
  • Lorenzo Sorbo (Amherst)
  • Federico Stasyszyn (IATE/OAC Cordoba)
  • Kandaswamy Subramanian (remote) (IUCAA/Ashoka)
  • Romain Teyssier (Princeton)
  • Pranjal Trivedi (Hamburg)
  • Michael Unger (Karlsruhe)
  • Valentina Vacca (remote) (INAF-OAC Cagliari)
  • Tanmay Vachaspati (Arizona State)
  • Franco Vazza (Bologna)

Organizers:

Local Organizing Committee:

Papers acknowledging this program:

1. E. Nazari, "Dynamics of the N-body system in energy-momentum squared gravity: Equations of motion to the first post-Newtonian order," arXiv:2402.06300, submitted to Phys. Rev. D during the program.

2. A. Brandenburg, A. Banerjee, "Turbulent magnetic decay controlled by two conserved quantities," arXiv:2406.11798

3. S. Mtchedlidze, P. Domínguez-Fernández, X. Du, E. Carretti, F. Vazza, S. P. O'Sullivan, A. Brandenburg, T. Kahniashvili, "Intergalactic medium rotation measure of primordial magnetic fields," arXiv:2406.16230

4. C.T. Becker, M. Kachelriess, "Polarized synchrotron data and the structure of the Galactic magnetic field", arXiv:2408.02554

5. A. Brandenburg, O. Iarygina, E. I. Sfakianakis, R. Sharma, "Magnetogenesis from axion-SU(2) inflation," arXiv:2408.17413

6. C. Caprini, R. Jinno, T. Konstandin, A. Roper Pol, H. Rubira, I. Stomberg, "Gravitational waves from decaying sources in strong phase transitions," arXiv:2409.03651