Conveners
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: AMS/Holometer
- Kirsten Anne Tollefson (Michigan State University (US))
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays
- Justin Vandenbroucke (University of Wisconsin)
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Gamma Ray Astrophysics
- Karen Byrum (Argonne National Lab)
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Large Scale Structure
- Shirley Ho (Carnegie Mellon University (US))
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Cosmic Microwave Background and Inflation
- Bradford Benson (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Cosmic Microwave Background and Neutrinos
- Jeffrey Filippini (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology: Gravitational Wave Detection: Present and Future
- Shirley Ho (Carnegie Mellon University (US))
Valerio Vagelli
(Universita e INFN, Perugia (IT))
04/08/2016, 09:00
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
We present a measurement of the cosmic ray (e$^{+}$+e$^{โ}$) flux in the range 0.5 GeV to 1 TeV based on the analysis of 10.6 million (e$^{+}$+e$^{โ}$) events collected by AMS. The statistics and the resolution of AMS provide a precision measurement of the flux. The flux is smooth and reveals new and distinct information. AMS measurements of individual e$^{+}$ and e$^{โ}$ fluxes show neither...
Andrew Chen
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
04/08/2016, 09:15
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
A precision measurement, with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, of the antiproton-to-proton ratio in the primary cosmic rays is presented. The measurement is made in the rigidity range from 1 to 450 GV and is based on 300,000 antiproton events. The measurement increases the precision and significantly extends the high rigidity range beyond previous observations.
Alberto Oliva
(Centro de Investigaciones Energ. Medioambientales y Tecn. - (ES)
04/08/2016, 09:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
AMS-02 is wide acceptance high-energy physics experiment installed on the International Space Station in May 2011 and operating continuously since then. AMS-02 is able to precisely separate cosmic rays light nuclei ($1\leq Z \leq 8$) with contaminations less than $10^{-3}$. The light nuclei cosmic ray Boron to Carbon flux ratio is a very well known sensitive observable for the understanding of...
Dr
Chris Stoughton
(Fermilab)
04/08/2016, 09:45
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Measurements are reported of high frequency cross-spectra of
signals from the Fermilab Holometer, a pair of co-located 39 m, high
power Michelson interferometers. The instrument obtains differential
position sensitivity to cross-correlated signals far exceeding any
previous measurement in a broad frequency band extending to the 3.8
MHz inverse light crossing time of the apparatus. General...
Prof.
Craig Hogan
(Fermilab and University of Chicago)
04/08/2016, 10:05
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Planck scale quantum geometry can lead to exotic correlations in displacements of bodies and phases of fields that grow with scale, in the same way as standard quantum correlations in extended systems. Such correlations resolve some of the well known conflicts of standard field theory with gravity on large scales. Even without a theory of quantum gravity, basic quantum principles suffice to...
Shunsaku Horiuchi
(Virginia Tech)
04/08/2016, 10:25
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm has been extremely successful in explaining the large-scale structure of the Universe. However, it continues to face issues when confronted by observations on sub-Galactic scales. We first summarize the small-scale issues surrounding CDM and discuss the solutions explored by modern state-of-the-art numerical simulations including treatment of baryonic...
Maurizio Giannotti
(Barry University)
04/08/2016, 10:45
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Several stellar systems show a preference for a mild non-standard cooling mechanism when compared with theoretical models. Taken individually, these excesses do not show a strong statistical weight. However, together they seem to indicate a systematic problem with our understanding of stellar evolution and, perhaps, a hint to new physics. Indeed, the exotic cooling could be provided by new...
Olivier Deligny
(CNRS/IN2P3)
04/08/2016, 11:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The Pierre Auger Observatory, located near the town of Malargรผe, Argentina, has been detecting ultra-high energy cosmic rays for more than ten years. An essential feature of the 3,000 km$^2$ Observatory is its hybrid design: cosmic rays above 10$^{17}$ eV are detected through the observation of the associated air showers with different and complementary techniques, from surface detector arrays...
Prof.
Charles Jui
(Telescope Array Collaboration)
04/08/2016, 11:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Since 2008, the Telescope Array (TA) has been the largest experiment observing ultrahigh energy cosmic rays in the northern sky. TA combines the precision of the air fluorescence technique with the efficiency of a ground array. Currently, TA consists of a surface detector with 507 scintillation counters, covering over 700 square kilometers, along with 38 fluorescence telescopes divided...
Peter Tinyakov
(Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB))
04/08/2016, 12:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Telescope Array (TA) is a hybrid detector of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs)
sensitive to cosmic rays with energies from about 10^16 eV to over 10^20 eV. The detector, which is operational from May 2008, by now has collected full 8 years of data and accumulated the largest to date UHECR data set in the Northern hemisphere. We will summarize the searches for anisotropy of UHECRs that...
Sijbrand De Jong
(Radboud University Nijmegen (NL))
04/08/2016, 12:25
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Detection of (ultra) high energy cosmic rays with the use of radio frequency emission in extensive air showers has been proven as complimentary to existing ground array detection techniques. Great progress has been booked in the theoretical understanding of the emission processes and in their Monte Carlo modelling. These have led to experimental results, notably also at the Auger Engineering...
steven prohira
(University of Kansas)
04/08/2016, 12:40
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The TARA Remote Stations (RS) are autonomous Very-High-Frequency radio receivers for the detection of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR). UHECR cause charged showers in the atmosphere which may become dense enough to reflect radio waves. The RS use firmware-based filtration and trigger techniques to receive and record these reflections from a dedicated VHF transmitter. We are co-located...
John Swain
(Northeastern University (US))
04/08/2016, 12:55
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
A long-standing puzzle in cosmic ray physics has been the nature
of the spectrum, which is very well modeled by a broken power law
with differing exponents, both close to -3, above and below the "knee".
We show that a rather simple hadronic evaporation model reproduces
the correct exponents, and the location of the knee without free
parameters. The model is predictive, with some successful...
Dr
Yu Seon Jeong
(KISTI)
04/08/2016, 13:15
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Cosmic rays incident on the Earth produce neutrinos through the interaction with nuclei in the atmosphere. At the energies above about 1 PeV, neutrinos from the charmed hadron decay (prompt neutrinos) dominate those from the pion and kaon decay (conventional neutrinos). The prompt neutrinos are important because they are the background to the astrophysical neutrinos.
We calculate the...
Amanda Weinstein
(Iowa State University)
04/08/2016, 14:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPS) are among the wide range of candidates for the dark matter (DM) that dominates the mass content of the universe. In some scenarios these WIMPs are self-annihilating. In regions of high dark matter density (such as our own Galactic Center) this self-annihilation is expected to produce a characteristic gamma-ray radiation signature that cuts off at...
Marcos Santander
(Barnard College, Columbia University)
04/08/2016, 14:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Multimessenger astronomy is an emerging area of study in high-energy astrophysics aimed at combining observations from instruments sensitive to different โcosmic messengersโ; neutrinos, photons, cosmic rays, and potentially gravitational waves. The VERITAS gamma-ray observatory has an active multimessenger program, currently focused on studying the connection between very high energy...
David Staszak
(University of Chicago)
04/08/2016, 15:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CREs) at GeV-TeV energies are a unique probe of our local Galactic neighbourhood. CREs lose energy rapidly via inverse Compton scattering and synchrotron processes while propagating in the Galaxy, effectively placing a maximal propagation distance for TeV electrons of order $\sim$1 kpc. Within this window, production of CREs can come from a handful of...
Segev BenZvi
(University of Rochester)
04/08/2016, 15:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC, is carrying out an unbiased survey of cosmic rays and gamma rays from the Northern Hemisphere between 100 GeV and 100 TeV. HAWC is currently the only high-uptime wide-field TeV observatory in operation, and has a robust program to search for flares and other transient sources of gamma rays. The detector is also well suited to observe...
Kirsten Anne Tollefson
(Michigan State University (US))
04/08/2016, 15:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory is a continuously operated, wide field-of-view (FOV) observatory sensitive to 100 GeV โ 100 TeV gamma rays and cosmic rays. HAWC has been making observations since summer 2012 and officially commenced data-taking operations with the completed detector on March 20, 2015. With an instantaneous FOV of 2 steradians, HAWC observes 2/3...
Prof.
Justin Vandenbroucke
(University of Wisconsin)
04/08/2016, 16:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a next-generation array of atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes that will feature an order of magnitude improved sensitivity compared to the previous generation of instruments. Building on the success of H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS in a complementary energy range to Fermi, CTA will investigate the particle physics of the cosmos through observations of gamma...
Brian Nord
(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
05/08/2016, 09:00
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is carrying out a five-year, 5000-sq.-deg. survey of the Southern Galactic Cap. Much of the wide-field area has not yet been systematically surveyed, so we expect to discover many new strongly lensed galaxies and quasars.
One of the main objectives of the strong lensing science program in DES is to derive constraints on dark energy. The two major components of...
Marcelle Soares-Santos
(Fermilab)
05/08/2016, 09:15
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is the largest imaging survey by cosmological volume to date. By observing and studying in detail the properties of tens of thousands of galaxy clusters, the DES clusters effort works towards our goal of measuring cosmological parameters with percent-level precision. We present the latest results from this program and discuss prospects for the upcoming data.
1442.
Cosmology from Clusters and Joint SPT-DES Analyses of Clusters in the SPT-SZ survey (12' + 3')
Lindsey Bleem
(Argonne National Laboratory)
05/08/2016, 09:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Galaxy clustersโthe largest gravitationally collapsed systems in the Universeโare powerful tools with which to constrain cosmological models as their abundance depends upon both the expansion history of the universe and the growth of density fluctuations. In this talk I will highlight cosmological results derived using clusters identified in the 2500-square-degree South Pole Telescope (SPT) SZ...
brenna flaugher
(Fermilab)
05/08/2016, 09:45
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
DESI is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the growth of structure with a wide-area galaxy and quasar spectroscopic redshift survey. The DESI instrument consists of a new wide-field (3.2 deg. field of view) corrector plus a multi-object spectrometer with 5000 robotically positioned optical fibers. It will be installed at prime...
Shirley Ho
(Carnegie Mellon University (US))
05/08/2016, 10:05
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Despite tremendous recent progress, gaps remain in our knowledge of our understanding of the Universe.
We have not yet pinned down the properties of dark energy, dark matter, nor have we confirmed Einsteinโs theory of Gravity at the largest scales.
Current and upcoming large sky surveys of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Large Scale Structure (LSS) in galaxies, quasars and lyman-alpha...
Elise Jennings
05/08/2016, 10:25
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The distortion of clustering due to the peculiar motions of galaxies and the apparent scale of characteristic features in the galaxy distribution are key tests of cosmic acceleration. I will discuss some of the current challenges in modeling redshift space distortions in large scale clustering statistics, at the percent level required by future galaxy redshift surveys. This will require us to...
Mikhail Solon
05/08/2016, 10:45
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
In the era of precision cosmology, understanding the formation of large scale structure (LSS) is essential for gaining insight into physics beyond the Standard Model and of the primordial universe. To that end, effective field theory (EFT) techniques familiar in high-energy physics are being developed for efficient and precise calculations of LSS observables.
In this talk, we present the...
Jeffrey Filippini
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
05/08/2016, 14:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
SPIDER is a powerful balloon-borne instrument to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at large angular scales. SPIDER targets the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves, with a focus on mapping a large sky area with high fidelity at multiple frequencies. SPIDERโs six monochromatic refracting telescopes (three each at 95 and 150 GHz) feed a total of more...
Tobias Marriage
(Johns Hopkins)
05/08/2016, 15:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
We are beginning a survey to provide a robust detection and characterization of the imprint of inflationary gravitational radiation in the CMB polarization (the so-called "B modes"). The same polarization measurement will provide the ultimate CMB-based cosmic-variance-limited measurement of the optical depth to reionization. When combined with CMB temperature, lensing and Baryon Acoustic...
MASAYA HASEGAWA
(KEK)
05/08/2016, 15:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
POLARBEAR is a ground-based CMB polarization experiment that is designed
to characterize the B-mode (curl component) signal both at degree and sub-degree
angular-scales. The degree-scale polarization data can be used for quantitative studies
on inflation, such as the reconstruction of the energy scale of inflation. The sub-degree
polarization data are an excellent tracer of large-scale...
Layne Price
(Carnegie Mellon University)
05/08/2016, 15:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
While the detailed particle physics implementation of inflation and dark matter remains an open question, they are important pillars of the standard cosmological models. Typically these two phenomena are assumed to be unrelated as the early inflationary epoch occurs vastly earlier than the timescales over which dark matter dominates. In this talk I will discuss how the lack of direct...
Andrew Long
(University of Chicago)
05/08/2016, 16:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Symmetries that are broken at zero temperature will typically be restored as the temperature is raised. A familiar example is the alignment of spins in a ferromagnet. Symmetry restoration may be accomplished by either a smooth crossover or a first order phase transition, i.e. bubble nucleation. In the Standard Model of particle physics, we are interested in the nature of the electroweak phase...
Bradford Benson
(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
06/08/2016, 09:00
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
I will give an overview of the science results and cosmological constraints from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT is a 10-meter diameter telescope designed for observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). I will highlight recent results from the completed SPT-SZ survey and the underway SPTpol survey, and discuss the projected constraints for the future SPT-3G survey. The...
Jason Henning
(University of Chicago)
06/08/2016, 09:15
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
All-sky surveys of the primary temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are now cosmic variance limited on large to intermediate scales. Surveys sensitive to smaller scales are additionally contaminated by brighter secondary anisotropies such as the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects and emission from unresolved sources. To place tighter constraints on...
Matthew Hasselfield
(Princeton University (US))
06/08/2016, 09:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
I will present recent results and show future directions for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) project. Over the past three years, ACT has surveyed 3000 square degrees of the Northern and Southern galactic caps, at 150 and 90 GHz, in both intensity and polarization, with resolutions of 1.3 and 2.0 arcminutes. These data have sufficient depth and angular scale coverage to provide...
Jeff McMahon
(University of Michigan)
06/08/2016, 09:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
Increasingly sensitive and precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have led to spectacular advances in our understanding of the origin, make up and evolution of our universe. We now have a standard cosmological model, $\Lambda$CDM, that fits all the cosmological data with only six parameters, although there are some tensions that may hint at cracks in the model. Far from...
Jan Hamann
06/08/2016, 10:10
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The early Universe is a very sensitive probe of various quantities related to neutrinos, e.g., the sum of neutrino masses, or the effective number of relativistic species. Currently, the most powerful cosmological observable are the temperature and polarisation anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which were recently measured to great precision by the European Space...
Prof.
Jihn E. Kim
(Kyung Hee University)
06/08/2016, 10:30
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
We realize a new type of leptogenesis where the W boson exchange diagram contributes. This enables us to express the lepton asymmetry in terms of the PMNS CP phase. For this to be realized, the electroweak gauge group remains broken during the leptogenesis epoch.
Chris Pankow
06/08/2016, 11:15
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
On September 15, 2015, subtle ripples in the fabric of space-time were detected by the twin LIGO interferometers, heralding the opening of the first observational run (O1) with second generation interferometers and gravitational-wave astronomy itself. By the close of that run, two additional significant events had been collected along with a wealth of scientific return. With observing...
Lisa Barsotti
(MIT (US))
06/08/2016, 11:50
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The two advanced detectors of the Laser Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) recently reported the first direct detection of gravitational waves, opening a new era for astronomy and astrophysics. Even if not yet operating at full sensitivity, Advanced LIGO has already largely surpassed the space-time volume surveyed by previous observations. This talk describes the Advanced LIGO detectors,...
Scott Ransom
(National Radio Astronomy Observatory)
06/08/2016, 12:25
Astro-particle Physics and Cosmology
Oral Presentation
The use of ensembles of well-timed millisecond pulsars (meaning pulse arrival times are measured with precisions better than 1 microsec) to directly detect nanohertz frequency gravitational waves (GWs) has reached a very important milestone. Our current sensitivities are constraining models of the mergers of super-massive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) throughout the universe. Each of the...
