Date
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January 2012
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01/16/2012
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Reserved
for Faculty search committee
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01/23/2012
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Reserved
for Faculty search committee
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01/30/2012
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Reserved
for Faculty search committee
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February 2012
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02/06/2012
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Reserved
for Faculty search committee
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02/13/2012
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Christine
Aidala (Brookhaven
National Laboratory)
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02/20/2012
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Matt
Wetstein (University of
Chicago)
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02/27/2012
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Spring
break
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March 2012
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03/05/2012
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Stephane Coutu (Penn State University)
Particle Astrophysics: A
Century of Adventure and Discovery
2012
marks the centennial anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays by
Victor Hess. These harbingers of high-energy phenomena in the cosmos have
taught us much about the fundamental constituents of the Universe and their
interactions, and about the nature of high-energy processes in our Galaxy and
beyond. Their continuing saga is fraught with challenges, requiring the
devising of new experimental techniques and
theoretical tools to pursue them to ever higher energies, greater
sensitivities, improved systematics and the reach
for new types of messengers. Modern projects push the state of the art in
instrument scales, operational exposures, deployment
in remote locations, the need for shielding against backgrounds, and in
exploring varied cosmic heralds such as nuclei, electrons, their antimatter
counterparts, gamma rays, neutrinos, free neutrons, and as yet undiscovered
messengers such as dark matter particles or gravitational waves. We will take
a tour through a storied, rich and active field, and highlight recent,
continuing and planned efforts.
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03/12/2012
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Peter Shawhan
(University of Maryland)
Listening with Ears Wide
Open for Gravitational Wave Bursts
The successful operation of the LIGO, GEO600 and
Virgo detectors has not yet been rewarded with the detection of a
gravitational-wave signal. Nevertheless, analysis of the data is
already providing some constraints on the population and characteristics of
sources. Searches for gravitational wave "bursts"--transient
signals with arbitrary waveform--are capable of detecting the widest range of
possible signals. I will present and interpret some recent search
results, including multi-messenger searches for astrophysical events. I will
also share the latest news about building the Advanced Detectors network.
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03/19/2012
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Cancelled
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03/26/2012
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Kendall
Mahn (TRIUMF)
Results from the T2K long baseline neutrino experiment
Neutrino oscillations have been observed and confirmed at two mass splittings ($\Delta m^2$), which is consistent with three
generations of neutrinos and an unitary mixing (PMNS) matrix. Despite the
rapid progress in understanding neutrino oscillations in the last decade,
further study of the large mixing in the leptons (as compared to the quark
CKM matrix) may give additional insight into the nature of neutrinos. If
$\theta_{23}$ is maximal (2$\theta_{23}=90$ degrees)
and/or $\theta_{13}=0$, then the PMNS matrix has a symmetry, indicative of
underlying physics. If, however, $\theta_{13}$ is non-zero, and sufficiently
large, then a programme to study CP violation
with neutrinos is possible, such as the proposed Long Baseline Neutrino
experiment in the US (LBNE) or Hyper-Kamiokande
experiment in Japan. In this case, CP violation with light neutrinos may have
some relationship to the CP violation in the decay of a hypothetical heavy
neutrino partner and to the development of the early universe.
The Tokai-To-Kamioka (T2K) long baseline neutrino
experiment is designed to precisely measure $\nu_{\mu}$
disappearance ($\Delta m^2_{23}$, $\theta_{23}$) and search for $\nu_e$ appearance ($\theta_{13}$). A beam of muon neutrinos is generated at the J-PARC facility in
Tokai-mura, Japan, and is sampled by two near
detectors, ND280 and INGRID, before reaching the Super-Kamiokande
detector, 295km away. This talk will report updated results from T2K on $\nu_{\mu}$ disappearance and $\nu_e$
appearance. Future prospects for T2K and long baseline neutrino physics will
also be discussed.
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April 2012
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04/02/2012
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Sarah Eno (University of Maryland)
Searching for Supersymmetry in the all hadronic
channel at CMS.
In this talk, I review the four different searches for r-parity conserving supersymmetry
in events containing jets and missing transverse energy using data taken
during 2010 by the CMS detector at CERN operating at a center-of-mass energy
of 7 TeV. I will also review the performance
of missing transverse energy for the CMS detector.
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04/09/2012
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CANCELLED
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04/16/2012
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Thomas
Gadfort (BNL)
Latest ATLAS search results
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04/23/2012
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John
Hobbs (Stony Brook)
New W boson mass at D0
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