Staff

NPA Seminar, Lee McCuller, MIT, "Wielding the Quantum Correlations in advanced LIGO"

Optical interferometers have begun a new era of astrophysics by measuring vast lengths to such precision that gravitational waves from distant collisions of black holes and neutron stars are now regularly observed. This past run, the global gravitational wave network itself entered a new era, whereby every detector’s sensitivity is enhanced using quantum squeezed states of light. Manipulating profound measurement precision has profound consequences – measurement back action, in LIGO taking the form of quantum radiation pressure noise on 40kg mirrors.

NPA Seminar, Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , "From Little Bangs in the Laboratory to Neutron Star Mergers"

Unlike phase diagrams in condensed matter that can be probed in the laboratory, the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram can only be mapped out through both experiments and astrophysical phenomena. At low baryon densities and high temperatures it is explored both through the big bang and the little bangs produced in heavy-ion collisions. At large baryon densities, either low-energy heavy-ion experiments or neutron star mergers can be used to map out its potential phases.

NPA Seminar, Steven Prohira, Ohio State University, "Toward Detection of UHE Neutrinos with the Radar Echo Telescope"

Detection of ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrinos is the key to understanding the most energetic processes in the universe, namely, the sources of UHE cosmic rays which have been detected at earth with energies exceeding 1 Joule per nucleon. As UHE cosmic messengers, neutrinos are unparalleled for their ability to travel from source to Earth. Unfortunately, however, they are very difficult to detect, owing to their low flux and small interaction cross section.

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