Conveners
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Rachel Mandelbaum (Carnegie Mellon University)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Hugh Lippincott (FNAL)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Rachel Mandelbaum (Carnegie Mellon University)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Tomasz Biesiadzinski
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Marilena Loverde (University of Chicago)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Marilena Loverde (University of Chicago)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Michael Schubnell (University of Michigan)
AstroParticle, Cosmology, Dark Matter Searches, and CMB
- Orin Harris (Indiana University South Bend)
Eric Huff
(Ohio State University)
04/08/2015, 14:00
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a large imaging survey of the southern sky designed to shed new light on the nature of the dark physics behind the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The DES collaboration built and participated in the installation and commissioning of DECam, a 570 mega-pixel optical and near-infrared camera with a large 3 deg$^2$ field of view, set at the prime focus of the...
Ms
Rachel Wolf
(University of Pennsylvania)
04/08/2015, 14:30
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are crucial observational tools for exploring the accelerated expansion of the universe. These brilliant explosions are one of the fundamental probes of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) - an international collaboration aiming to understand the mysterious Dark Energy. In the first few years of the survey, the SN Ia group has made exciting progress in SN Ia discovery and...
Rutuparna Das
(University of Michigan)
04/08/2015, 14:50
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
We present the first set of galaxy cluster weak lensing results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification data. The Science Verification (SV) run, approximately 160 square degrees of multi-epoch imaging in four frequency bands, contains data for thousands of clusters, many of which have been newly discovered by DES. The DES-SV area also contains regions that overlap with...
Ting Li
04/08/2015, 15:10
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
The census of Milky Way satellite galaxies provides crucial tests of both galaxy formation models and the broader Cold Dark Matter paradigm. The discoveries of many dwarf galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have also provided insight on the nature of dark matter and the reionization of the universe. It is estimated that many hundreds of ultra-faint Milky Way companions will be...
Alex Geringer-Sameth
(Carnegie Mellon University)
04/08/2015, 16:00
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
I will present results from a search for gamma-ray emission in nine Milky Way satellites recently discovered in the Dark Energy Survey. The nearest of these, Reticulum 2, shows evidence for a signal in public Fermi data. The detected emission is consistent with annihilating dark matter with a particle mass less than a few hundred GeV. Different ways of treating the background yield different...
Matthew Walker
(Carnegie Mellon University)
04/08/2015, 16:15
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
Images from the Dark Energy Survey have recently revealed a new population of dwarf-galactic satellites of the Milky Way. Based on their proximity, sizes and low luminosities, several of the new objects are attractive targets in searches for products of dark matter annihilation. I will summarize current astrophysical results for the nearest of the new dwarf galaxies, Reticulum II, and will...
Alejandro Lopez
04/08/2015, 16:30
Astroparticles/Cosmic Rays
It is shown that a Weakly Interacting Massive dark matter Particle (WIMP)
interpretation for the positron excess observed in a variety of experiments,
HEAT, PAMELA, and AMS-02, is highly constrained by the Fermi/LAT observations
of dwarf galaxies. In particular, this paper has focused on the annihilation
channels that best fit the current AMS-02 data (Boudaud et al., 2014). The
Fermi...
Stephen Portillo
(Harvard University)
04/08/2015, 16:48
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
Several groups have identified a highly significant and spatially extended excess of GeV gamma-rays in the Inner Galaxy using data from the Fermi LAT. While this signal’s properties are consistent with those expected from dark matter annihilation, another interpretation is that it is the emission from a population of unresolved millisecond pulsars. We implement a Bayesian method for producing...
Kerstin Perez
04/08/2015, 17:06
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
Recent years have seen increased theoretical and experimental effort towards the first-ever detection of cosmic-ray antideuterons, in particular as an indirect signature of dark matter annihilation or decay in the Galactic halo. In contrast to other indirect detection signatures, which have been hampered by the large and uncertain background rates from conventional astrophysical processes,...
Peter Karn
(University of Wisconsin - Madison)
04/08/2015, 17:24
Astroparticles/Cosmic Rays
The excess of positrons in cosmic rays above ∼10 GeV has been a puzzle since it was discovered. Possible interpretations of the excess include acceleration in local supernova remnants or pulsars, or the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles. To tell the difference, the positron fraction must be measured at higher energies. One technique to perform this measurement is using the...
Ms
Leila HAMDAN
(Kuwait University)
05/08/2015, 14:00
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
Dynamical models of dark energy can imply that the fine structure constant $\alpha$ varies over cosmological time scales. Data on shifts in resonance energies $E_r$ from the Oklo natural fission reactor have been used to place restrictive bounds on the change in $\alpha$ over the last 1.8 billion years. We review the uncertainties in these analyses, focusing on corrections to the standard...
Amy Bender
(Argonne National Laboratory)
05/08/2015, 14:18
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
The South Pole Telescope is a millimeter-wavelength telescope dedicated to observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The next generation upgraded receiver, known as SPT-3G, is scheduled for deployment in early 2016. SPT-3G will have a focal plane of 2,710 pixels. Each pixel contains six transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers, sensitive to orthogonal linear polarizations and...
Jeffrey Filippini
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
05/08/2015, 14:36
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
Our account of cosmic history begins with inflation, a moment of rapid expansion that set the stage for our universe's evolution. This inflationary epoch should have left a very faint imprint upon the sky at millimeter wavelengths: a “B-mode” (odd-parity) pattern of polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). January 1st saw the successful launch of SPIDER, a powerful balloon-borne...
Chi-Ting Chiang
(Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics)
05/08/2015, 14:54
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
The influence of large-scale density fluctuations on structure formation on small scales is described by the three-point correlation function (bispectrum) in the so-called ''squeezed configurations.'' We show that the ''position-dependent power spectrum'' measures this bispectrum without employing the three-point function estimator. Specifically, we divide a survey into subvolumes, measure the...
Julia Katharina Vogel
(Lawrence Livermore Nat. Laboratory (US))
05/08/2015, 15:12
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The nature of dark matter (DM) remains one of the fundamental questions in cosmology. Axions are one of the current leading candidates for the hypothetical, non-baryonic DM. Especially in the light of LHC slowly closing in on WIMP searches with latest results placing strong restrictions on simplified and constrained models of supersymmetry, axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) provide a...
Fuquan Wang
(University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Physics)
05/08/2015, 16:00
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
Searches for new phenomena in final states with an energetic photon or jet and large missing transverse momentum (MET) are presented. The searches use 20 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV data collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are interpreted as exclusion limits on the...
Samuel McDermott
05/08/2015, 16:18
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
In the event of dark matter direct detection, learning in a data-driven way about the interactions between dark matter and the Standard Model will be of utmost importance. In new work, coworkers and myself have demonstrated the possibilities for Bayesian model selection of a wide class of theories in a potential future situation where direct detection is confirmed by a variety of different...
Junhui Liao
05/08/2015, 16:36
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
A large body of astronomical evidence across all length scales, from galaxy rotation curves, to lensing studies and spectacular observations of galaxy cluster collisions, to cosmic microwave background measurements, all points to the existence CDM(Cold Dark Matter) particles. WIMP(Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) represent a class of dark matter particles that froze out of thermal...
Orin Harris
(Indiana University South Bend)
05/08/2015, 16:54
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The PICO Collaboration, formed from the merger of the Chicago-based COUPP and the Canadian-based PICASSO experiments, uses bubble chambers to search for dark matter. Bubble chambers are a unique dark matter detector technology. They provide very high $~10^{10}$ intrinsic electron recoil rejection, the ability to switch nuclear targets, acoustic rejection of alpha events, simple data...
Kyungeun Lim
(Yale University)
05/08/2015, 17:12
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The DM-Ice experiment aims at the direct detection of annually-modulating WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) dark matter signal using NaI(Tl) detectors. DM- Ice17, the first-generation detector with 17 kg of NaI(Tl), was deployed in the South Pole ice in December 2010 and has been successfully operated since then. R&D efforts for the quarter-tonne scale detector are well underway at...
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Kyungwon Kim
(Center for Underground Physics, Seoul National University)
05/08/2015, 17:30
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
A number of experiments are operating around the world that search for WIMP, one of the Dark Matter candidates. Among these experiments, DAMA is unique in that it has consistently claimed the observation an annual WIMP modulation signal while others rule out the DAMA signal region in the parameter space. The KIMS-NaI experiment aims to confirm the DAMA observation unambiguously using same type...
Dr
Patrick de Perio
(Columbia University)
05/08/2015, 17:48
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The XENON dark matter project aims at finding direct evidence for the scattering of weakly interacting massive dark matter particles (WIMPs) with nuclei in an ultra-low background liquid xenon detector. The XENON100 detector, located at LNGS in Italy, collected dark matter data between 2008 and 2014, producing some of the best limits in the field. In this talk, we present new results from the...
Sahar Bahrami
(Concordia University)
06/08/2015, 14:00
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
In this work we analyze the effects of introducing vectorlike leptons in the Higgs triplet model to provide a scenario that can explain both neutrino masses and provide a Dark Matter candidate, two essential shortcomings of the Standard Model. We investigate constraints, including the invisible decay width of the Higgs boson and the electroweak precision variables, and impose restrictions on...
Mikhail Solon
(University of Chicago)
06/08/2015, 14:18
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
I report status and recent results in the theory and phenomenology of heavy WIMP annihilation signals.
Dr
Matteo Fasiello
(Stanford University)
06/08/2015, 14:36
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
The quest for a stable, compelling, cosmology of massive gravity.
I will introduce some of the everyday tools of massive (bi)gravity and then show how, confronted with stability and observational requirements, one may employ them to place strong constraints on the parameters space of the theory.
Dr
Hayato Motohashi
(University of Chicago)
06/08/2015, 14:54
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
We develop optimized approaches for the evaluation of curvature and
gravitational wave power spectra from single field inflation
using the generalized slow-roll approach
to extend the validity of the standard slow-roll approximation.
Since the deviations from scale-invariance are only assumed
to be small in amplitude not in temporal frequency,
our approach applies to models with...
Evangelos Sfakianakis
(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
06/08/2015, 15:12
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
Axions are attractive candidates for theories of large-field inflation that are capable of generating observable primordial gravitational wave backgrounds. These fields enjoy shift-symmetries that protect their role as inflatons from being spoiled by coupling to unknown UV physics. This symmetry also restricts the couplings of these axion fields to other matter fields. At lowest order, the...
Tansu Daylan
(Harvard University)
06/08/2015, 16:00
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
Dark matter annihilations can inject a significant amount of energy into the visible sector following the clustering of Dark Matter (DM) into halos at late times. Motivated by the DM interpretation of the gamma-ray excess in the inner Milky Way, we study the diffusive escape of the electrons and positrons produced by DM annihilations from the host halo, and the subsequent in-situ upscattering...
Tanja Rindler-Daller
(Dept.of Physics, University of Michigan)
06/08/2015, 16:18
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
The standard model is insufficient to explain two a-priori unrelated problems in modern physics, the nature of the cosmological dark matter (DM) and baryon asymmetry. The latter has long been sought to
be explained by baryogenesis at the electroweak scale, which, however, has been proven to be very difficult for a Higgs boson mass as high as 125 GeV.
In this presentation, we will explore a...
Daniel Grin
(University of Chicago)
06/08/2015, 16:36
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
Ultra-light axions (ULAs) with masses in the range 10^{-33} eV <m <10^{-20} eV are motivated by string theory and might contribute to either the dark-matter or dark-energy density of the Universe. We explore the impact of such axions on cosmological observables, like the CMB and galaxy correlation power spectra. We will discuss our use of precision cosmological data (from the Planck satellite...
Joshua Eby
(University of Cincinnati)
06/08/2015, 16:54
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
The idea that light, self-interacting scalars (e.g. axions) comprise a major component of Dark Matter has recently received renewed interest. It has been shown previously not only that macroscopic bound states of such particles can exist in a Bose-Einstein Condensed phase, but also that this can have unique consequences in astrophysical or terrestrial detection experiments. We present a...
Niayesh Afshordi
06/08/2015, 17:12
Cosmology and Dark Energy Experiment
We study the influence of the fluctuations of a Lorentz invariant and conserved vacuum on cosmological metric perturbations, and show that they generically blow up in the IR. We compute this effect using the Kallen-Lehmann spectral representation of stress correlators in generic quantum field theories, as well as the holographic bound on their entanglement entropy, both leading to an IR...
Mustafa Amin
(University of Cambridge)
06/08/2015, 17:30
Cosmology and Dark Matter Theory
The early universe is likely filled with a large number of interacting fields with unknown interactions. How can we quantitatively understand particle production (for example, during inflation and reheating after inflation) when such fields undergo a sufficient number of non-adiabatic, non-perturbative interactions ? Based on a precise mapping between particle production in cosmology to...
Kirsten Anne Tollefson
(Michigan State University (US))
07/08/2015, 14:00
Astroparticles/Cosmic Rays
The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory was completed and began full operation at the end of March 2015. Located at an elevation of 4100 meters above sea level and declination of 19 degrees north near the Sierra Negra volcano in central Mexico, HAWC is sensitive to 100 GeV - 100 TeV gamma-rays and cosmic-rays with a sensitivity to TeV-scale gamma-ray sources that is an order of...
Mr
Augusto Ghiotto
(Columbia University, VERITAS Collaboration)
07/08/2015, 14:18
Astroparticles/Cosmic Rays
Supernova remnants (SNRs) have long been considered the leading candidates for the accelerators of cosmic rays within the Galaxy through the process of diffusive shock acceleration. The connection between SNRs and cosmic rays is supported by the detection of high energy (HE; 100 MeV to 100 GeV) and very high energy (VHE; 100 GeV to 100 TeV) gamma rays from young and middle-aged SNRs. However,...
James Thomas Linnemann
(Michigan State University (US))
07/08/2015, 14:36
Astroparticles/Cosmic Rays
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are gravitationally collapsed objects that may have been created by density fluctuations in the early universe and could have arbitrarily small masses down to the Planck scale. Hawking showed that due to quantum effects, a black hole has a temperature inversely proportional to its mass and will emit all energetically allowed species of fundamental particles...
J. Patrick Harding
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)
07/08/2015, 14:54
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory is a wide field-of-view observatory sensitive to 100 GeV – 100 TeV gamma-rays and cosmic-rays. The HAWC observatory is also sensitive to diverse astrophysical searches for signatures of annihilating and decaying dark matter. These include gamma-ray emission from extended sources of dark matter such as galaxies and Galaxy clusters,...
Kasia Frankiewicz
(National Center for Nuclear Research, Poland),
Katarzyna Frankiewicz
(National Centre for Nuclear Research)
07/08/2015, 15:12
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
This work presents indirect searches for dark matter (DM) as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) using neutrino data recorded by Super-Kamiokande from 1996 to 2014. The results of the search for WIMP-induced neutrinos from the Sun and the Milky Way are discussed. We looked for an excess of neutrinos from the Sun/Milky Way compared to the expected atmospheric neutrino background. Event...
Tom Caldwell
(University of Pennsylvania)
07/08/2015, 16:00
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
Single-phase liquid argon detectors offer a technically simple approach towards a very massive detector for the direct detection of dark matter with potential to extend sensitivity into the “background floor” imposed by the coherent scattering of extraterrestrial neutrinos. MiniCLEAN, with a target mass of 500 kg, serves as a prototype to demonstrate this approach. Event energy and position...
Bei Cai
(Queen's University)
07/08/2015, 16:18
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The DEAP-3600 experiment uses 3.6 tons of liquid argon for a sensitive dark matter search, with a sensitivity to the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section of 10^{-46} cm^2 at 100 GeV WIMP mass. This high sensitivity is achievable due to the large target mass and the very low backgrounds in the spherical acrylic detector design as well as at the unique SNOLAB facility in Sudbury, Canada....
Alden Fan
(UCLA)
07/08/2015, 16:36
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
DarkSide-50 is the first physics detector of the DarkSide dark matter search program. The detector features a dual-phase underground-argon Time Projection Chamber (TPC) of 50 kg active mass surrounded by an organic liquid-scintillator neutron veto (30 tons) and a water-Cherenkov muon detector (1000 tons). The TPC is currently fully shielded and operating underground at Gran Sasso National...
Tomasz Biesiadzinski
07/08/2015, 16:54
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is working on the detection of dark matter particles through their possible weak interactions with heavy nuclei. LUX is a dual phase time projection chamber (TPC) filled with 350kg of liquid Xenon and located 5000 feet underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). It uses the ratio of the primary scintillation and secondary...
Carter Hall
(University of Maryland)
07/08/2015, 17:12
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
LZ is the successor experiment to LUX, the current most sensitive dark matter detector operated at Sanford Lab in South Dakota. It is a 20x upgrade in target mass with a goal of 100x improvement in WIMP-nucleon cross-section sensitivity after three years of data. The design of the experiment is well advanced and critical technology demonstrations are underway. Here we present relevant elements...
Andi Tan
07/08/2015, 17:30
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The PandaX Collaboration has designed and constructed dual-phase xenon detectors to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which is a leading dark matter candidate. We have reported the first 17.4 live-day and full 80.1 live-day exposure results of the first stage of the PandaX experiment (PandaX-I) located in China JinPing Underground Laboratory (CJPL). With a fiducial mass...
Matthew Szydagis
(University at Albany)
07/08/2015, 17:48
Cosmology and Dark Matter Experiment
The scintillating bubble chamber has the potential to be an incredibly powerful new tool for dark matter detection. Combining the world-leading electron recoil rejection of a bubble chamber with the energy information available in a liquid scintillator, these devices should achieve unprecedented discrimination against all backgrounds while working with a variety of target materials. New...
