// Enter speaker information here. The format is: // // ["Date","Name","Affiliation","Title","Abstract","Day","Time"] // // In the Abstract field you must escape double quotes (\"). Some HTML // is possible (like
, , etc.). // // ** Edited to add color change for special day/time. // ** If Day or Time field is not empty, special day/time // ** is/are added in date column in red. // // 201208, add host column // ******* Please follow the format below. // ******* IMPORTANT: // ******* All the information for one talk should be in a single line. // Month[i]=["date","Speaker","Institution","Title","Abstract","Host","Special Time Notes","Special Time Notes"]; // ******* //July[0]=["23","Priti Shah","Utah","Monocular Measurement of the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Spectrum","no abstract","Local","Special Day","10:30am"]; //August[0]=["31","He Ap","Utah","Fun with HEAP","I will talk about fun.","Mr Heap","",""]; //August[0]=["29","","","","","","","",""] September[0]=["5","All","HEAP","Jamboree","We ask each of the faculty members, postdocs, and students to submit one slide on their recent or ongoing research or on their research interests. The seminar will be composed of 1-2min talks by everyone (a.k.a. machine gun talks or lightning talks). This provides an opportunity for people to know the current activities in the astronomy and high-energy groups, and it also serves as an introduction of the groups to the newly coming students.","Local","","",""] September[1]=["12","Nao Suzuki","Kavli IPMU","Classifying Quasar Spectra in eBOSS","SDSS-III/BOSS has ended successfully this summer, and the next SDSS-IV/eBOSS has just started. More than 300,000 Quasar spectra are obtained through BOSS, and they are all visually inspected by French team. For eBOSS, we aim to double or triple the number of quasar spectra, and we anticipate it is beyond the reach of visual inspection. I will discuss my apprach of how to automate it. Also, it's been known for decades that each emisson line of quasars exhibits slightly different redshifts, and it is causing a trouble of mesuring the clustering. I show the origin of these redshift shifts and how we can attack the problem by studying the spectral diversity of quasars. The spectral diversity represents the physical properties of quasars, such as black hole mass and mass accretion rate. I will discuss the opportunities of eBOSS data how to relate the physical properties to the spectral diversity. If time allows, I will mention the progress of SuMiRe Project which is the Imaging and Spectroscopic survey by Subaru Telescope.","Kyle Dawson (David Harris)","","",""] September[2]=["19","Sebastiano Cantalupo","UCSC","Illuminating the Dark Universe with Quasar-induced Lyman-alpha Emission","Gravitational collapse during the Universe's first billion years transformed a nearly homogeneous matter distribution into a network of filaments - the Cosmic Web - where galaxies form and evolve and where the majority of baryons reside as rarefied gas. Because most of this material is too diffuse to form stars, its study has been limited so far to absorption probes against background sources. In this talk, I will present the results of a new, successful program to directly detect and study cosmic gas in the early Universe. This experiment uses an external 'source of illumination', a bright quasar, to light up with fluorescent Lyman-alpha emission 'dark' proto-galactic clouds, dense streams around galaxies and the Cosmic Web. I will describe our pilot project based on deep narrow-band imaging with VLT /FORS centered on a z=2.4 hyper-luminous quasar: how we identified and characterized the physical properties of the first 12 'dark' galaxy candidates detected in the early Universe. I will then present observations of fluorescent emission from the gas surrounding star-forming galaxies and very recent results obtained with Keck/LRIS of the detection of hundred-kpc scale filaments surrounding bright quasars: the first direct images of the Cosmic Web.","Zheng Zheng (Raphael Sadoun)","","",""] September[3]=["26","Renyue Cen","Princeton Univ.","Physics of Galaxy Color Migration","Utilizing state-of-the-art adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, an analysis of the histories of a large sample of galaxies is performed and insights gained on how galaxies migrate from the blue cloud to the red sequence. It is found that ram-pressure stripping and cold gas starvation are both instrumental in driving galaxies' color migration, collectively termed environment quenching. The consequences from the environment quenching are in some cases intriguing and explained in this lecture.","Zheng Zheng (Raphael Sadoun)","","",""] October[0]=["3","Kyle Dawson","Utah","Beyond the Hubble Diagram: The Progenitor Systems and Environmental Dependence of Type Ia Supernovae","Type Ia supernovae remain the best source of measurements of the cosmic distance scale during the phase of accelerating expansion. The joint analysis of the SDSS-II and SNLS supernova samples includes 740 supernovae Ia and is now limited in precision due to systematic uncertainties in calibration and supernova astrophysics. To further improve SNe Ia as a cosmological tool, it is essential to address both sources of systematic uncertainty. In this talk I present the results of our prior work to improve the modelling of the SN Ia explosion mechanism. I conclude with a status update on our work to understand the effect of host galaxy environment on the properties of SNe Ia.","Local","","",""] October[1]=["10","Vivek Mariappan","Utah","Variability in Quasar Outflows","Quasar outflows have a huge impact on the evolution of central supermassive blackholes, their host galaxies and the surrounding intergalactic medium. Studying the variability in these Broad Absorption Lines(BALs) can help us understand the structure, evolution, and basic physical properties of these outflows. I will present the results of our repeated Low ionization BAL monotoring program with 22 LoBALs(five of them are Fe LoBALs) at z 0.3-2.1 covering timescales from 3.22 to 7.69 years in the quasar rest frame. We see a variety of phenomena, including some BALs that either appeared or disappeared completely and some BALs which do not vary over the observation period. In one case, the excited fine structure lines have changed dramatically.","Local","","",""] //October[2]=["17","","","","","","","",""] October[2]=["24","John Lajoie","Iowa State","Probing Nucleon Structure with Spin at RHIC","Spin-polarized deep-inelastic scattering in the late 1980's and early 1990's made a remarkable discovery, namely, that the spin of a proton was not carried predominantly by the constituent quarks. This discovery, often referred to as the 'spin crisis', implied that the spin of a proton is generated by the dynamics of Quantum Chromodynamics (or QCD, the 'strong' nuclear force). Because of this, we can use spin as a tool to further our understanding of bound systems of quarks in QCD. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has an extensive physics program to study both transverse and longitudinally spin-polarized p+p collisions over a range of energies. In this presentation I will review what the RHIC experiments have learned from the first ten years of operation of the world's only spin-polarized collider. I will also discuss the plansfor the next decade of RHIC operations, where we will greatly extend the physics reach of spin measurements in polarized p+p and p+A collisions.","Doug Bergman","","",""] October[3]=["31","Julian Bautista","Utah","Baryon acoustic oscillations in the Lyman-alpha forest of BOSS quasars","Measuring the expansion of the Universe as a function of time allows us to understand the fundamental physics causing this expansion. Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) imprint a standard ruler in the matter distribution, which can be used to study expansion and cosmological distances. Using ~130,000 Lyman-alpha forests from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, we measured the BAO standard ruler at high redshift (z=2.3) in the flux correlation function, leading to a 3% inference of the Hubble expansion rate at z=2.3. Combined with the local expansion rate, this result requires a cosmological model with a dark energy component, as also inferred from a completely independent measurement using supernovae of type Ia.","Local","","",""] November[0]=["7","Victor Gehman","Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory","Direct Search for Dark Matter with Two-phase Xenon Detectors: the Present with LUX and the Future with LZ","The search for dark matter reaches back generations and remains one of the most compelling endeavors in the hunt for physics beyond the Standard Model. Experiments attempting to directly detect weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter have made remarkable progress in increasing their sensitivity to the elastic scattering of WIMPs on nuclei. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is a 370-kg, two-phase, xenon time projection chamber currently running at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), 4850 feet below Lead, SD. LUX recently completed its first science run (in the fall of 2013) and was sensitive to spin independent WIMP scattering at cross sections below 1e-45 square centimeters for WIMP masses of approximately 20 to 80 GeV. Preparations for the final science run of LUX are currently underway, with final results expected in 2015. Successful operation of the LUX detector is also an important milestone in the use of technologies (such as water shielding and thermosyphon cryogenics) proposed for even larger detectors. We will present results from and current status of the LUX experiment, as well as plans for a follow-on, multi-ton-scale xenon experiment at SURF.","Pierre Sokolsky","","",""] November[1]=["14","Claire Poppett","Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory","Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument: Probing dark energy with optical fibers and 5000 robots","The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment that will be installed at the Mayall Telescope in Arizona. This five year survey covering 14,000 deg2 to z=3.5 is accomplished using five thousand robotically positioned optical fibers that can be quickly reconfigured with a 5 micrometer positioning accuracy. In this talk I will present an overview of the entire instrument with a focus on the fiber performance in the near and far field of two types of robotic positioners: tilting spine mechanical simulators and eccentric axis (or theta-phi) positioners. The far field performance of the fiber is important since the instrument efficiency is adversely affected if light from the fibers enters the spectrograph at a faster focal ratio than the spectrograph can accept (f/3.57 in the DESI design). This degradation of the focal ratio of light is caused by light entering the fiber off axis (tiliting positioner) or bending, twisting, and stress of the fiber (eccentric axis) positioner. The stability of the near field intensity distribution of the fiber is important since this determines the spectrograph point spread function (PSF). If the PSF changes from the calibration to the science exposures, this will result in an extraction bias. For DESI, a particular concern is the distortions in the PSF due to movement of the fibers during re-pointing.","Kyle Dawson","","",""] November[2]=["21","Hy Trac","Carnegie Mellon Univ.","Cosmic Reionization: How the First Galaxies Lit Up the Universe","Cosmic reionization is a milestone event whereby the first generation of stars, galaxies, and quasars photo-ionized and photo-heated the hydrogen gas by the time the Universe was about a billion years old. How and when did the epoch of reionization (EoR) effectively begin and end are still highly uncertain. Ongoing observations of high-redshift galaxies, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and 21cm radiation will help address the many open questions. On the theoretical front, I will present a new project called SCORCH (Simulations and Constructions of the Reionization of Cosmic Hydrogen) that will provide theoretical tools to facilitate more accurate comparisons with and Constructions of the Reionization of Cosmic Hydrogen) that will provide theoretical tools to facilitate more accurate comparisons with regions tracing the large-scale structure are generally reionized earlier than lower-density regions far from sources. Using a novel method to construct mock observations on Gigaparsec scales, I quantify and discuss the imprints of patchy reionization on the CMB and 21cm radiation.","Zheng Zheng (Raphael Sadoun)","","",""] //November[3]=["28","","","","","","","",""] December[0]=["5","Julie Comerford","University of Colorado Boulder","AGN in Motion: Mergers, Kicks, and Feedback","Galaxy mergers produce kpc-scale separation dual supermassive black holes, which are the smallest separation supermassive black hole pairs yet confirmed. These dual supermassive black holes will ultimately become black hole binaries and merge, and they are visible if one or both black holes is accreting gas, in systems known as offset AGN and dual AGN, respectively. I will discuss multiwavelength observations of offset AGN and dual AGN in radio, near infrared, optical, and X-ray, which also reveal examples of AGN feedback and a possibility of an AGN that received a kick due to gravitational wave emission from two merging black holes. Finally, I will discuss how combining our observations with theory gives us new insights on black hole inspiral timescales and where AGN fueling occurs in a galaxy merger.","Anil Seth","","",""] //December[1]=["12","","","","","","","",""] December[1]=["15","Greg Stinson","MPIA","A critical phase in galaxy formation","As galaxies grow and evolve, they go through a violent phase of their evolution where intense star formation drives outflows. I will examine this phase using cosmological galaxy formation simulations. The simulations show that starbursts and outflows have implications for many observed properties of galaxies including their gaseous halos, morphology, potential, and star formation history.","Anil Seth","Special Day","",""] January[0]=["16","Andrea Albert","Stanford Univ.","Indirect Dark Matter Searches with the Fermi Large Area Telescope","There is overwhelming evidence that non-baryonic dark matter constitutes ~27% of the energy density of the universe. Many promising dark matter candidates, like Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), may produce gamma rays via annihilation or decay detectable by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi LAT). A detection of gamma rays from dark matter is exciting since it would indicate the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model. I will present recent results from the Fermi-LAT Collaboration, including results from our search for spectral lines, and investigations of dwarf galaxies and the Galactic center.","Pierre Sokolsky","","",""] January[1]=["23","Julien Guy","Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory","Type Ia supernova Cosmological Constraints from the SNLS/SDSS Joint Light curve Analysis","I will present recent progress in the measurement of cosmological parameters with type Ia supernovae which result mainly from a significant improvement in the photometric calibration of the SNLS and SDSS surveys. The high supernova statistics gathered recently, combined with a sub-percent accuracy in the relative flux calibration, allows us to map the variations of the luminosity distance as a function of z with a relative precision of about 3% in logarithmic redshift bins delta_z/z=0.5 between to z=0.02 and z=0.7. This approach is today the most sensitive probe of Dark Energy. Combining with the recent CMB measurement from Planck, we obtain a measurement of the equation of state parameter w=-1.018+-0.057.","Kyle Dawson","","",""] January[2]=["30","Jeff Phillips","University of Utah","Matrix Sketching: Large-Scale Approximate Matrix Computation","Linear algebra is at the core of many modern data analysis tasks as a matrix can be used to encode a large variety of data sets including image databases, social networks, genetic data arrays, and complex simulations. However while traditional computational linear algebraic techniques focus on operations with precision to 10 or more digits of precision, this detail is often not needed for modern data where noise can affect data up to the 3rd or 4th digit of precision. Considering these more generous approximations has led to an array of new matrix analysis techniques in the last decade that can scale well-beyond what typical in-memory linear algebra packages could reach. As these methods work by approximating the matrix before decomposing or operating on it, they are often referred to as matrix approximation or matrix sketching. I will briefly overview this area and then describe a new approach to matrix sketching called Frequent Directions, as well as some variants. This technique provides the strongest possible trade-off between error and sketch size (in theory and in practice), and operates in streaming, online, and distributed setting, so that the analysis can be updated as new data arrives from many sources. (Joint work with: Mina Ghashami, Amey Desai, Edo Liberty, and David Woodruff)","Zheng Zheng","","",""] February[0]=["6","Katie Devine","College of Idaho","Dust and Gas Emission from MIR Bubbles","Mid-infrared (MIR) bubbles, identified in galactic surveys, have been extensively studied with the aim of understanding both their structure and influence on the surrounding interstellar medium. Studies of MIR bubbles aim to explore the relationship between bubble expansion and subsequent star formation. I will present observations toward MIR bubbles N56 and N90 obtained using the Herschel Space Telescope and Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The GBT ammonia spectral line observations of bubble N56 show evidence of line broadening coincident with IR-identified young stellar objects; in contrast, no ammonia was detected in N90. The Herschel continuum observations indicate a significant difference in average clump mass in the two bubbles. The differences in the dust and gas results may be due to a combination of difference in evolution and mass-scale between N56 and N90.","Pearl Sandick","","INSCC 345",""] February[1]=["13","Masami Ouchi","Univ. of Tokyo","Cosmic Reionization and Galaxy Formation Probed by Ultra-Deep Observations","I review our ultra-deep observation results of Subaru, HST, and ALMA, and discuss cosmic reionization and galaxy formation up to z~10. The major questions of cosmic reionization are the evolution of neutral hydrogen density in the IGM, and the sources triggering the reionization event. We address the former issue by the Subaru deep imaging for Lya emitters that are sensitive probes of neutral hydrogen of IGM, and the latter problem by the Hubble Frontier Fields project that targets z~6-10 faint galaxies, strong candidates of major reionization sources. In the galaxy formation component of my talk, I introduce our recent HST studies for galaxy morphology evolution at z=0-10, and show our supplementary deep NIR spectroscopy and ALMA 1.2mm observations indicating the ISM ionization parameter evolution of star-forming galaxies. At the end of my talk, I report the status of our on-going deep large-area optical imaging survey of Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam.","Zheng Zheng","","",""] February[2]=["20","Scott Burles","Cutler Group, LP","Options after Physics","I will discuss career choices after an academic career, with references to my own. I will explore pros and cons, and try to extend general advice. The punch line: it's win vs. win.","Adam Bolton","","",""] February[3]=["27","Scott Watson","Syracuse University","How well can we really know the scale of inflation?","A detection of primordial gravity waves has been heralded not only as a smoking gun for the existence of inflation, but also as a way to establish the scale at which inflation took place. In this talk I will review the connection between a confirmed detection of primordial gravity waves and the scale of inflation. In particular, I will discuss whether other primordial sources of gravity waves could lead to a misinterpretation of the data. I will also discuss challenges for inflation model building and the implications for the post-inflationary, 'Big Bang' universe.","Pearl Sandick","","",""] February[4]=["27","Andrew Smith","NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Maryland College Park","Recent Results From (and Outlook for) Ground and Spaced Based Gamma-ray Astronomy","The last 10 years have seen a dramatic explosion of important science results from both space based instruments (~0.3-300 GeV) such as Fermi and AGILE, as well as ground based instruments (~100-500 GeV) such as VERITAS, HESS, and MAGIC. These instruments have provided in depth exploration of some of the most energetic and unexplored cosmic sources. In this talk I will review the most important results from these instruments in the last few years as well as looking forward to the next generation of both classes of instruments. The future for ground based instruments is already being cemented with the completion of the HAWC array in Mexico, as well as the upcoming CTA array planned for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The successor to Fermi is also in the works, with several mission concepts being planned and tested. I will survey several of these concepts and discuss the excellent science potential afforded by the combination of these next generation observatories.","Dave Kieda","Special Time","3pm",""] March[0]=["6","Sebastian Kamann","University of Göttingen","Massive multiplex MUSE spectroscopy in globular clusters","Past research has revealed many intriguing aspects about the nature of globular clusters, ranging from the detection of multiple populations to the possibility of intermediate-mass black holes residing in their centres. Still, our understanding of globular clusters is limited by the challenges of performing spectroscopy in crowded stellar fields. A striking example is the search for intermediate-mass black holes, where different studies came to conflicting results. However, new instruments for performing spatially resolved spectroscopy in combination with sophisticated analysis techniques promise to overcome these limitations. In my talk, I will present the first results from a survey of Galactic globular clusters with the panoramic integral field spectrograph MUSE. It aims at obtaining spectra for more than 10000 stars in the central region of each cluster and facilitates a wide range of scientific applications, such as the study of multiple populations, the distribution of binary periods, and the search for black holes.","Anil Seth","","",""] March[1]=["13","Jack Hughes","Rutgers University","Evidence for Cosmic Ray Acceleration from X-ray/gamma-ray observation of Supernova Remnants","Over the past few years, observations in the X-ray and gamma-ray bands, coupled with theoretical investigations, have led to important new insights into the process of particle acceleration at high speed shocks in supernova remnants. In this presentation I will review observational results largely from the X-ray/gamma-ray bands that reveal the presence of shock-accelerated relativistic electrons and ions and amplified magnetic fields at these shock fronts. An important point is that there are now multiple and complementary results that support the scenario of cosmic-ray acceleration at high-speed shocks in the interstellar medium.","Doug Bergman","","",""] //March[2]=["22","","","","","","","",""] March[2]=["27","Zhaohuan Zhu","Princeton University","Transitional Disks: Signatures of Gap Opening by Young Planets?","Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks with gaps and holes. These gaps and holes are first discovered from the disks' SEDs (e.g. Spitzer), but later confirmed by direct imaging techniques. Recent near-IR polarization imaging (e.g. SEEDS, VLT) and submm (e.g. SMA, ALMA) observations have revealed a tremendous amount of details on these disks, but also posed new puzzles. These observations suggest that dust and gas start to decouple in these gaps and holes. The decoupling not only occurs in the inner disk but also in the outer disk, and moreover the decoupling can occur non-axisymmetrically in disks. To understand these new findings, we have carried out both hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic global simulations with young planets in disks. Furthermore, dust particles have been implemented into these simulations to understand dust-gas interaction in turbulent disks. Non-ideal MHD effects have also been included in these global simulations. By comparing such realistic simulations with observations, we have constrained protoplanetary disk properties and revealed the early stage of planet formation. Finally, I will discuss the observational strategies to directly find young planets in protoplanetary disks and suggest that accreting circumplanetary disks could be the key to detect young planets directly. Current direct imaging observations have already found some circumplanetary disk candidates. In order to distinguish such disks from young planets, it is crucial to do direct imaging observations at mid-IR.","Zheng Zheng","","",""] April[0]=["3","Brice Menard","Johns Hopkins University","The large-scale distribution of baryons","On scales larger than galactic disks the distribution of baryons in the Universe is still poorly understood. On those scales we happen to have a better mapping of the enigmatic dark matter distribution than those of gas and dust. Inspired by the statistical analyses used in weak lensing I will show how it is possible to reveal the distribution of baryons by measuring extremely low levels of absorption and extinction induced by the presence of metals. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, I will present new results showing how gas and dust are distributed well beyond galactic disks, up to Mpc scales. Finally, I will discuss how this new type of information can be used to better understand the physics of galaxy formation and evolution.","Zheng Zheng","","",""] April[1]=["10","Danny Jacobs","Arizona State University","Chasing our Cosmic Dawn: Opening the 21cm cosmological window on the universe","The Epoch of Reionization (EoR) marks when the first stars ionized the primordial hydrogen half a billion years after the big bang. Direct observation of cosmological hydrogen is possible via the 21cm line and is now being hotly pursued as a new cosmological probe. Danny Jacobs is helping to lead observations with both the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). PAPER currently holds the deepest limits on the epoch of reionization power spectrum, while the MWA is leading the charge towards understanding foregrounds at a level necessary for imaging large scale structure. The two intertwined themes in these new instruments are the degree to which experimentation is an essential component of the science process and the ascendance of the software pipeline. Experiments currently under-way to refine array sensitivity include high-bandwidth forward-modeling of instrumental response, developing high level heuristics for data flagging, accelerating imaging pipelines, pushing more analysis steps into real-time systems, and in-situ calibration with external drone-mounted transmitters. Lessons learned and systems developed for PAPER and the MWA are being incorporated into the next generation Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) that will yield 20 times the sensitivity of first generation arrays, and into the upcoming Square Kilometer Array.","Adam Bolton","","",""] April[2]=["16","Scott Dodelson","Fermi Lab","Early Results from the Dark Energy Survey (and the South Pole Telescope)","The standard cosmological lore is that galaxy survey and cosmic microwave background experiments open up a window on fundamental physics such as dark energy and dark matter. The four distinct probes enabled by surveys -- Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, Clusters, Gravitational Lensing, and Supernovae -- together with a pristine view of the early universe via the CMB allow us to determine cosmological parameters such as the equation of state of dark energy. I argue that this paradigm is breaking down, as we come to realize that the four probes are all correlated with one another and with the CMB itself. How to proceed is the subject of a raging debate, with many possible routes and assumptions. I give a few examples and recent from the Dark Energy Survey and the South Pole Telescope.","Kyle Dawson","Special Date and Time 1pm","INSCC Auditorium",""] April[3]=["24","","","","","","","",""] May[0]=["1","Mark Krumholz","UCSC","The Origin of Stellar Masses","The mass distribution of newborn stars, known as the initial mass function (IMF), has a distinct peak at a mass slightly less than that of the Sun. This characteristic stellar mass appears to be nearly invariant across a huge range of star-forming environments, and over most of cosmic time. Explaining its origin and universality is one ofthe oldest problems in theoretical astrophysics, and a fully successful theory eludes us even today. In this talk, however, I describe recent progress toward an explanation for the mass scale of stars. This work is based on radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, which elucidate the way forming stars feed back on their environments and regulate the process of turbulent fragmentation that determines the IMF. Using insight from these simulations, I show that it may even be possible to express the characteristic mass of stars in terms of fundamental constants.","Anil Seth","","",""]