The University of Mississippi
Department of Physics and Astronomy

Seminars/Colloquia, Fall 2024

Unless noted otherwise, Tuesday Colloquia are at 4:00 PM, refreshments will be served 15 minutes before each colloquium.
Scheduling for additional seminars will vary.

Date/Place Speaker Title (and link to abstract)
Tue, Aug 27
Lewis 101
Department Social
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi
Ice Cream Social
Tue, Sep 3
Lewis 101
Bhubhanjyoti Bhattacharya
Department of Natural Sciences
Lawrence Technological University
Puzzles in B-meson Decays
Tue, Sep 10
Lewis 101
Likun Zhang and Cecille Labuda
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi
Physical Acoustics and Fluid Dynamics
Tue, Sep 17
Lewis 101
Xiaoyan Huang, Joshua Moore, and Aniket Khairnar
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

UM Grad Student Talks:
Xiaoyan Huang: TMS Charge ID in the DUNE Experiment
Joshua Moore: Entanglement in the Fredkin Spin Chain
Aniket Khairnar: Approximate Helical Symmetry in Compact Binaries

Tue, Sep 24
Lewis 101
Sunghwan Jung
Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering
Cornell University
Drinking, Diving, and Shaking
Tue, Oct 1
Lewis 101
Bhupal Dev
Department of Physics
Washington University in Saint Louis
Seeing the Invisible: Neutrino-Dark Matter Interactions
Tue, Oct 8
Lewis 101
James Bonifacio
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi
Bounding the Unknown: Hyperbolic Manifolds and the Conformal Bootstrap
Tue, Oct 15
Lewis 101
Gil Paz
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Wayne State University
How Big Is The Proton?
Tue, Oct 22
Lewis 101
Meghna Bhattacharya
Scientific Computing Division
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Probing the Unknown Through a Neutrino Lens
Tue, Oct 29
Lewis 101
UM graduate students
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

UM Grad Student Talks:
Kumar Pandey: Differential Decay Distributions in Semi-Leptonic B Mesons

Tue, Nov 5
Lewis 101
UM graduate students
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi
Student Talks
Tue, Nov 12
Lewis 101
James Friend
Center for Medical Devices
University of California — San Diego
Acoustic Streaming
Tue, Nov 19
Lewis 101
Shawn Dubey
Department of Physics
Brown University
Training Deep 3D Convolutional Neural Networks to Extract BSM Physics Parameters Directly from HEP Data: a Proof-of-Concept Study Using Monte Carlo Simulations
Tue, Nov 26
Lewis 101
Thanksgiving Break  
Tue, Dec 3
Lewis 101
Hayley Macpherson
Department of Physics
University of Chicago
 
Tue, Dec 10
Lewis 101
Final Exam Week  

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The physics colloquium organizer is Alakabha Datta
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Latest update: Friday, 25-Oct-2024 17:19:45 CDT

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Abstracts of Talks


Bhubhanjyoti Bhattacharya
Department of Natural Sciences
Lawrence Technological University

Puzzles in B-meson Decays

Heavy meson decays provide optimal testing grounds for theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In this talk, I will discuss a handful of recently uncovered puzzles in decays of heavy B mesons that may shed greater light on the “flavor tail” of new physics.


Likun Zhang and Cecille Labuda
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi;

Physical Acoustics and Fluid Dynamics

Likun Zhang and Cecille Labuda will give a general overview of their research in physical acoustics and fluid dynamics. The talk will cover complex fluids, biomedical applications of ultrasonics, ocean, physics, fluid physics and “ acoustofluidics”.


Xiaoyan Huang
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

TMS Charge ID in the DUNE Experiment

An introduction to the DUNE experiment, TMS of the near detector system, its role in the reconstruction of muon track and charge identification.


Joshua Moore
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

Entanglement in the Fredkin Spin Chain

Quantum entanglement has emerged as a useful tool for studying the ground states of many-body systems. It has been proven that the entanglement entropy for gapped systems in one-dimension does not grow with the system size, obeying an “area law”. We investigate the entanglement properties of a gapless one-dimensional spin chain — the Fredkin spin chain — where the entanglement entropy is found to grow logarithmically with the system size.


Aniket Khairnar
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

Approximate Helical Symmetry in Compact Binaries

The inspiral of a circular, non-precessing binary exhibits an approximate helical symmetry. The effects of eccentricity, precession, and radiation reaction break the exact symmetry. We estimate the failure of this symmetry using the flux of the BMS charge corresponding to helical symmetry carried away by gravitational waves. We compare the analytical computation of helical flux with 113 NR waveforms of quasi-circular non-precessing binaries from the SXS catalog. The helical symmetry is numerically satisfied to at least a relative 5PN order.


Sunghwan Jung
Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering
Cornell University

Drinking, Diving, and Shaking

Biological organisms have presumably adapted their behaviors or features in response to surrounding mechanical forces or instabilities to achieve better performance. In this talk, I will discuss three problems in which the dynamical system approach elucidates the physics behind animal behaviors. First, we investigated how cats and dogs transport water into the mouth using an inertia-driven (lapping) mechanism. We found that to maximize water intake per lap, both cats and dogs close the jaw at the column break-up time governed by unsteady inertia. This break-up (or pinch-off) time can be predicted using the stability analysis of the water column in which surface tension balances with inertia. Second, we studied how animals plunge-dive and survive from impact. Physical experiments using an elastic beam as a model for the body attached to different shapes revealed limits for the stability of the injuries during plunge-dive. The body response can be simplified as the Euler beam buckling problem with unsteady impact force on the diving front. Third, I will discuss the mechanism of releasing water lodged in the ear canal. For example, people often shake their head sideways to remove water out of ear canal after swimming or s howering. This removal process involves high acceleration to push water out of a canal, which is analogous to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. If time permits, I will briefly talk about how humans produce sound by clapping their hands, a process that can be modeled using classical Helmholtz resonance.


Bhupal Dev
Department of Physics
Washington University in Saint Louis

Seeing the Invisible: Neutrino-Dark Matter Interactions

Neutrinos and dark matter remain two of the least known sectors of fundamental physics. Although both are “invisible” particles, we argue that a sizable interaction between them can leave footprints in several experimental observables. We implement the full catalog of constraints coming from cosmological and astrophysical datasets, as well as derive new laboratory constraints from meson and Z-boson decays. We then study the prospects of detecting neutrino-dark matter interactions in future galactic supernovaneutrino events at large-volume neutrino experiments, such as DUNE.


James Bonifacio
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

Bounding the Unknown: Hyperbolic Manifolds and the Conformal Bootstrap

The conformal bootstrap has emerged as a powerful tool in theoretical physics, enabling us to find precise constraints on conformal field theories using only fundamental consistency conditions. In this talk, I will introduce a version of the conformal bootstrap that can be applied to hyperbolic manifolds and show how it can be used to find bounds on the eigenvalues of the Laplacian operator that are in remarkable agreement with numerically computed spectra.


Gil Paz
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Wayne State University

How Big Is The Proton?

Current atomic and optical physics methods allow to search for very weak new interactions. The main obstacle is often controlling nuclear uncertainties. Such studies can yield benefits for these areas of physics independent of the new physics motivation.

In this talk I will discuss three such examples. The first is the proton radius puzzle and looking for a new force that couples to muons but not electrons. The second is looking for dark matter via oscillations of nuclear radii. The third is using a nuclearclock to look for time variation of fundamental constants.


Meghna Bhattacharya
Scientific Computing Division
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Probing the Unknown Through a Neutrino Lens

Neutrinos are some of the most fascinating fundamental particles in nature, they are ubiquitous and enigmatic at the same time. As misfits of the Standard Model, neutrinos have been observed to change their flavor, or oscillate, providing evidence for neutrino mass and Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics. There are also hints that neutrinos could be the reason the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter.

In this talk, I will outline some of the most fundamental questions in physics and the quest for better understanding through neutrino physics experiments. These fundamental questions range from the origin of matter, to supernova bursts in the universe, to the grand unification of forces. I will give an overview of the field of neutrino measurements from past to present and discuss how recent results from current neutrino oscillation experiments such as NOνA and T2K have shaped our understanding. Additionally, I will focus on how the next generation of experiments such as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) are being designed to enhance the precision with which we can use neutrinos to probe these deep questions about our universe. Finally, I will highlight recent results from the MicroBooNE experiment, which has been a trailblazer in the flagship liquid argon detector program and is paving the path towards DUNE.


Kumar Pandey
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

Differential Decay Distributions in Semi-Leptonic B Mesons

This talk delves into the study of semi-leptonic decays of B mesons, specifically focusing on the differential distributions of decay products to probe potential signatures of New Physics (NP) beyond the Standard Model (SM). Using an effective field theory (EFT) framework, we model the b → cℓν transitions in B mesons, incorporating NP effects through various four-quark operators and coupling constants. A Monte Carlo simulation with EvtGen is employed to examine distributions such as q2, θ*, χ and under both SM and NP assumptions. Results indicate minor deviations in angular distributions between SM and NP scenarios, though overall alignment with SM predictions suggests limited sensitivity to NP within certain variables. Concluding with insights into future observables, this study emphasizes the importance of differential decay distributions in refining our understanding of the SM and exploring potential NP contributions.


James Friend
Center for Medical Devices
University of California — San Diego

Acoustic Streaming

The analysis and use of acoustic streaming has taken on new urgency in the past few years with the recognition that classical analysis methods are unable to accurately quantify the flows generated by passing acoustic waves beyond a few hundred kHz. This issue, known since at least Lighthill’s namesake publication in the 1970s, has not been addressed in the time since, with many researchers—including the author—resorting to computational analysis and approximations to overcome at least some of the problems. Moreover, few researchers have been willing to consider the dynamic behavior of acoustic streaming: the delayed onset, the response to inharmonic excitation, and the delayed flows after the acoustic wave ceases, though these aspects are important in many experiments. Much of the reason is the challenge of the analysis of such flows. After considerable work via an alternative analysis path, we may finally have arrived at a method for closed-form analysis of acoustic streaming at least in one dimension, with transient behavior and both nonlinear compressibility and viscous effects included. We present a coherent and straightforward plan for analyzing simple acoustic streaming cases where classic theories fall short.


Shawn Dubey
Department of Physics
Brown University

Training Deep 3D Convolutional Neural Networks to Extract BSM Physics Parameters Directly from HEP Data: a Proof-of-Concept Study Using Monte Carlo Simulations

We report on a novel application of computer vision techniques to extract beyond the Standard Model parameters directly from high energy physics flavor data. We propose a simple but novel data representation that transforms the angular and kinematic distributions into “quasi-images”, which are used to train a convolutional neural network to perform regression tasks, similar to fitting. As a proof-of-concept, we train a 34-layer Residual Neural Network to regress on these images and determine information about the Wilson Coefficient C9 in Monte Carlo simulations of  B0 → K*0μ+μ decays. The method described here can be generalized and may find applicability across a variety of experiments.