Science Week 2010

11 Oct 2010, 09:00 → 14 Oct 2010, 18:00 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium in building D2 (Max-Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP))

Andreas Burkert (USM), Stephan Paul (TU-München)

For the fourth time, the Cluster hosts its annual 'Science Week'. From 11 to 14 October 2010 Cluster scientists and invited guests will present their current research work in the fields of astrophysics, particle and nuclear physics. The Science Week is an interdisciplinary event and directed to all scientists who want to gain insight into the current state of all Cluster research areas A-G. ** No Registration for participants necessary ** ** No Fees **

Abstract-Booklet Abstract_Booklet.pdf

Access information access_info.jpg

Poster example poster_example.pdf

Poster List poster_list.pdf

Poster template (Illustrator) template_illustrator.ai

Poster template (LaTeX) template_2010_LaTeX.zip

Poster template (PPT) template_powerpoint.ppt

Program-flyer Science_week_Flyer.pdf

Monday 11 October

09:00 → 09:05 Opening

Speakers: Andreas Burkert, Stephan Paul

09:05 → 09:50 The Sociology of Hadrons

Despite of all we know about strong force, we still do not have a clear picture about the meson-baryon interaction, let it be naked or dressed in a nuclear medium. Things are particularly complicated if strange quarks come into the play. Our research deals on one side with the study of possible in-medium modification of meson, with the aim to connect these effects with chiral symmetry restoration. On the other hand we try to understand how attractive the kaon-nucleon interaction can be and its implication with the existence of a kaon condensate. At the end we study the sociology of hadrons, alias how do they behave while being at a party surrounded by more or less nucleons?

Speaker: Laura Fabbietti

Slides talk_fabbietti.pdf

09:50 → 10:35 Four Topics in Cluster Cosmology - Calibrations, Survey Designs, Scatter and Cluster Models

Cosmology with clusters have come of age. Large cluster surveys are already delivering their first results. Even larger cluster surveys are on the horizon. The power of these surveys as good cosmic probes essentially rests on our capability to calibrate the cluster masses and/or cluster gas physics. This can be done either in a statistical way using ‘self-calibration’ or through follow-up observations coupled with theoretical modeling and state-of-the-art simulations. In this talk, Subha will touch upon different aspects of doing cosmology with clusters focusing specifically on (a) aspects of self-calibration; (b) optimal design of surveys; (c) importance of finding a low scatter proxy for mass-observable relations and (d) building better, and numerically fast, cluster models for use in SZ power spectrum analysis.

Speaker: Subha Majumdar

10:35 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:45 Planck and the Cosmic Microwave Background

Torsten presents the Planck Surveyor Satellite Mission to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is in operation for about a year. He introduces the fundamental physical mechanisms in the primordial and present day Universe imprinting structures and polarization patterns onto the CMB. The challenge of the Planck data analysis to recover these signals is briefly discussed in order to understand the potential of Planck to accurately measure cosmological and inflationary parameters of our Universe.

Speaker: Torsten Enßlin

Slides talk_ensslin.pdf

11:45 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:15 Star Formation in the Carina Nebula, the Nearest Laboratory of Massive Star Feedback

Results of a recent deep multi-wavelength study of the Great Nebula in Carina will be presented. The Carina Nebula contains some of the most massive and luminous stars in our Galaxy and is the best site to study in detail the physics of violent massive star formation and the resulting feedback effects, i.e. cloud dispersal and triggering of star formation. With a distance of 2.3 kpc, it constitutes our best bridge between nearby regions like Orion and the much more massive, but also more distant extragalactic starburst systems like 30 Doradus. Our new X-ray and infrared data reveal, for the first time, the low-mass stellar population, and allow us to study the ages, mass function, and disk properties of the young stars. We also probed the morphology of the molecular clouds throughout the complex and the interaction between massive stars and clouds. These observational data will be modeled in detailed numerical radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the effects of stellar feedback on molecular cloud dynamics and turbulence. This will show how ionizing radiation and stellar winds disperse the clouds, enrich the surrounding clouds with heavy elements, and trigger the formation of a new generation of stars.

Speaker: Thomas Preibisch

14:15 → 14:45 An alternative scenario of cosmic inflation

Cosmic inflation stands as the essential mechanism that gives rise to the initial conditions of the standard cosmological scenario. Despite this, there is not a fundamental theory that can justify inflation giving unique predictions, but rather there are different inflationary models whose predictions can be contrasted to observations. In this work we propose an alternative scenario of inflation and see how it can be applied with some specific examples.

Speaker: Erandy Ramirez (new Cluster Fellow))

Slides talk_ramirez.pdf

14:45 → 15:15 Coffee break

15:15 → 16:00 New results from low-energy neutrino physics

The contribution reviews the latest results of the solar neutrino experiments Borexino and SNO and their impact on the standard solar model and the global analysis of neutrino oscillations: The Borexino result on the Be-7 neutrino survival probability confirms the presence of vacuum neutrino oscillations at sub-MeV energies, backing up the MSW-LMA oscillation scenario. Nevertheless, the search for non-standard effects in the transition region from vacuum to matter-dominated oscillations in the energy regime from 1 to 5 MeV is still on-going: Both Borexino and SNO have by now published analyses of the B-8 neutrino flux below 5 MeV that provide mutually consistent but not conclusive results regarding oscillation models. The prospects of Borexino for an analysis of the B-8 neutrino flux below the present threshold of 3 MeV and for a first-time direct measurement of the pep neutrino line at 1.4 MeV in energy will be outlined. Moreover, there are new results from Borexino on the detection of geoneutrinos: Due to the favorable background conditions in the detector and the remoteness from nuclear power plants, the current measurement of Borexino provides the highest significance for the geoneutrino signal. The result will be discussed in the context of geophysical models.

Speaker: Michael Wurm

Slides talk_wurm.pdf

16:00 → 16:30 Neutrinos: connecting Microcosmos to Macrocosmos

The last decade has seen tremendous progress in the field of neutrino physics, which is now entering a precision era. Accurate analyses of laboratory and cosmological data enable us to determine the basic standard neutrino properties, and constrain possible extensions of the Standard Model, thus probing the universe on the smallest scales. Furthermore, the study of neutrinos brings precious information on their natural sources (like the Sun and the Earth), opening a new window on the macrocosmos. Antonio will review the status and prospects of this multidisciplinary field of research.

Speaker: Antonio Palazzo

Slides talk_palazzo.pdf

16:30 → 17:00 Exploring CP violation in present and future experiments

CP Violation is one of the necessary ingredients for the matter-anti-matter asymmetry we observe in the Universe. One of the most powerful tools for the investigation of this phenomenon are B Factories, which study CP violating effects in B meson systems. The Belle experiment, which has collected BBbar pairs at the Y(4S) resonance at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e- collider, provides a wealth of precision results on the CP violation within the standard model. The observed strength of these effects is by far not sufficient to explain the matter-anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe, requiring New Physics beyond the Standard Model. This might become accessible with the full Belle data set presently being analyzed, and can be further probed with new experiments in preparation. We discuss the latest measurements of the decay B0 --> pi+ pi-, which is sensitive to CP violating parameters in the Standard model, and the decay B0 --> K+ pi- which provides excellent prospects for the discovery of New Physics.

Speaker: Jeremy Dalseno

Tuesday 12 October

09:00 → 09:45 Advanced photometric studies of GRB afterglows

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are cosmic, stellar explosions, that emit a typical amount of energy of 10^51 erg in gamma-rays on short time scales of 0.1 to 100 seconds. The prompt emission in gamma-rays is followed by a longer-lasting afterglow, which can be detected in all wavelengths ranges from radio, optical, to X- and gamma-rays up to several days after the explosion. Furthermore, GRBs are linked to the death of massive stars, and hence to star formation in the early phases of the Universe. The large energy release and high luminosity of GRBs and their afterglows make them excellent in-situ probes of the end stages of stellar evolution and for studying the early Universe. In addition, they are ideal laboratories for the physics in extreme environments. I will review the latest progress with respect to observational GRB astronomy, with a strong focus on the work done at the Universe Cluster and the MPE with the Gamma-Ray burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND). Individual aspects from this work are observations of ultra-high-redshift GRBs, GRBs as probes of dust and gas, and constraints on the outflow properties of GRBs.

Speaker: Thomas Krühler (MPE)

Slides talk_kruehler.pdf

09:45 → 10:30 Particle physics beyond the Standard Model

Speaker: Paride Paradisi

Slides talk_paradisi.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:45 First Physics Results from LHC pp Collisons in ATLAS: Top, Higgs, and Searches

First results from LHC proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during this year and short term prospects of the ATLAS early physics program are discussed, concentrating on the physics of top-quarks, Higgs bosons, and highlighting searches for signals beyond the Standard Model.

Speaker: Giorgio Cortiana

Slides talk_cortiana.pdf

11:45 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:15 First LHC results with ATLAS on Supersymmetry

The talk will review the first measurements of supersymmetry-sensitive variables with the ATLAS detector using the sqrt(s) = 7 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, with a focus on final states containing jets and missing transverse energy.

Speaker: Marie-Hélène Genest

Slides talk_genest.pdf

14:15 → 14:45 CP violation studies at hadron colliders

The study of CP violation aims to solve one of the fundamental questions in physics, that of the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Experiments at hadron colliders are very active in producing results in this field. Precision measurements, which provide constraints on CP violating parameters, are an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics and have the potential to reveal evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. The focus of this talk is on measurements of CP violation in heavy quark systems, particularly in the neutral B meson system which has yielded several results of interest. As an example, recent analyses from the CDF experiment at the Tevatron will be shown, and a brief outlook on plans for future work in this area in a higher energy regime on the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC will be presented.

Speaker: Louise Oakes

Slides talk_oakes.pdf

14:45 → 15:15 Coffee break

15:15 → 16:00 String theory and the worldsheet point of view

The basic idea in string theory is that the fundamental constituents describing matter as well as forces are one-dimensional objects, the strings. When propagating through space-time, the string sweeps out a two-dimensional surface, the world-sheet. A tool to describe the physics of strings is then the two-dimensional conformal field theory living on the worldsheet. We review a few recent developments.

Speaker: Ilka Brunner

Slides talk_brunner.pdf

16:00 → 16:30 Nuclear Star Clusters and Black Holes

Nuclear star clusters appear to follow the same scaling relation as supermassive black holes in that their mass is proportional to the mass of their host galaxy. It has therefore been proposed that nuclear clusters are an alternative incarnation of "central massive objects" in lower mass galaxies. However, unlike black holes, nuclear clusters provide a visible record of the accretion of stars and gas into the nucleus. I will describe our program to obtain multi-wavelength high resolution observations of the nearest nuclear star clusters to determine their morphology, kinematics and stellar populations. These observations provide important information on the formation mechanism of nuclear star clusters, and allow us to estimate nuclear star cluster and potential black hole masses and examine scaling relations with their host galaxies.

Speaker: Nadine Neumayer

16:30 → 17:15 Inflation and Leptogenesis

Inflation is a successful paradigm for solving the flatness and horizon problem of standard big bang cosmology and for explaining the origin of structure in the universe. The connection between inflation and particle physics, however, is still unknown. In this talk we will discuss new developments regarding supersymmetric particle physics models of inflation where the inflaton field, i.e. the field responsible for inflation, resides in the matter sector of the theory. Interesting candidates for the inflaton field are, for example, the superpartner of the right-handed neutrino or the unified matter particle in supersymmetric Grand Unified Theories. After inflation, all particles in the universe are created from the energy stored in the inflaton field. We discuss how the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, prerequisite for our existence, can be created very efficiently from the decays of the inflaton field via the mechanism of non-thermal leptogenesis.

Speaker: Stefan Antusch

Slides talk_antusch.pdf

20:00 → 21:00 Public Talk: Alles aus Nichts: Der Ursprung des Universums

Die zentrale Frage der Kosmologie ist wie unsere Welt entstanden ist. Die Entdeckung der kosmischen Hintergrundstrahlung im Jahr 1964 war dabei ein Durchbruch. Sie ist ein Überrest der Hitze des Urknalls und verrät, wie das Universum entstanden ist und woraus es besteht. Damals war kein Objekt größer als ein Heliumatomkern. Normale Materie bestand zu 75% aus Wasserstoff und zu 25% aus Helium. Viel häufiger als normale Materie ist jedoch die Dunkle Materie, die vermutlich aus vollkommen neuen Elementarteilchen besteht. Wie ist die Komplexität der heutigen Welt aus einem recht einfachen Anfangszustand entstanden? Kosmologen erforschen diese Frage mit Beobachtungen und Computersimulationen. Sie finden dabei, dass es Sekundenbruchteile nach dem Urknall eine Phase extremer kosmischer Ausdehnung gegeben haben muss: die Inflation. Die physikalische Ursache für die Ausdehnung war sehr wahrscheinlich das Vakuum im Weltall, d.h. alle Struktur wäre somit aus dem Nichts entstanden. Achtung: Öffentliche Veranstaltung im Bürgerhaus Garching. Eintritt frei.

Speaker: Simon White

Wednesday 13 October

09:00 → 09:45 Bayesian methods for analyzing the large scale structure of the Universe

According to the current paradigm of cosmological structure formation the observable large scale matter distribution arose via gravitational amplification from tiny primordial density fluctuations. Especially modern numerical simulations reveal that cold dark matter aggregates to form a filamentary cosmic web consisting of huge empty regions, the so called voids, filaments and clusters.Hence, precision analysis of three dimensional large scale structure (LSS) data will help us to identify and understand the physical processes governing cosmological structure formation leading to a more complete theoretical picture of our Universe. However, contact between theory and observations cannot be made directly, since observational data is subject to a variety of systematic effects and statistical uncertainties. Most notably of those are the survey geometry and selection effects as well as statistical noise. Mapping the three dimensional matter distribution in the Universe thus requires accurate statistical data analysis methods. In my talk I will present new full Bayesian data analysis methods designed to provide detailed cosmographic descriptions of the large scale structure in the Universe while accounting for all observational uncertainties. As a result these methods provide sampled representation of the LSS posterior distribution, which enables us to report any desired statistical summary such as mean, mode or variance of the density field. Application of our method to the latest Sloan Digital Sky Survey data lead to the generation of detailed cosmographic maps for the three dimensional matter distribution and the possibility to accurately quantify its significance. These results permit a variety of following cientific projects to analyze the clustering behavior of matter in the Universe. In summary, the presented methods provide an efficient and flexible basis for high-precision LSS inference.

Speaker: Jens Jasche (formerly MPA, now Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Univ. Bonn)

Slides talk_jasche.pdf

09:45 → 10:30 Experiments with low energy neutrons and their relation to the universe cluster

Complementary to high energy reactions at accelerators precision experiments with very low energy neutrons can address basic questions in particle physics and cosmology. Excellent tools like the FRMII and related instrumentation offer very good conditions for significant progress in the years to come. The talk will give an overview touching the various aspects and activities ongoing in this field of science.

Speaker: Stephan Paul

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:45 Direct Dark Matter Search with CRESST and EURECA

CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) and the planned EURECA (European Underground Rare Event Calorimeter Array) are experiments aimed at the direct detection of dark katter. A well-motivated candidate to account for dark matter are WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). The expected WIMP signature consists in a nuclear recoil of a few keV measured in low-temperature CaWO4 detectors equipped with superconducting transition sensors operated at a few mK. After a successful commissioning run in 2007 CRESST has presently taken several hundred kilogram-days of DM data (2009-2010), which are presently under evaluation. A preliminary analysis of a part of this data yields an excess of oxygen recoil events, which is presently difficult to explain with neutrons or alpha, beta and gamma background alone. If conventional background contributions can be ruled out, part of the signal could also be interpreted as a DM signature of low-mass WIMPs.

Speaker: Jean-Come Lanfranchi

Slides talk_lanfranchi.pdf

11:45 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:30 Highlight Talk: Towards new frontiers in stellar core-collapse theory

Hydrodynamical simulations with sophisticated multi-energy, multi-flavor neutrino transport have established the viability of the neutrino-driven mechanism for explosions of low-mass progenitors with O-Ne-Mg cores, and have shown its success, though marginal, in two dimensions for some more massive progenitors with iron core. This has led to revised predictions of observable signals from stellar core collapse and to new insights into heavy-element formation during supernova explosions, in particular of p-process nuclei and the possible origin of the light r-process elements. It has, however, also enhanced the puzzle of the astrophysical source of the heavy r-process elements. The Garching group is now pushing its modeling efforts forward to later evolution phases, to the third dimension, and towards a broader investigation of the links between the progenitor stars and observable properties of the explosions and remnant populations.

Speaker: Hans-Thomas Janka

Slides talk_janka.pdf

14:30 → 16:30 General Meeting of Cluster Members

Thursday 14 October

09:00 → 09:45 Overview Talk RA A

Speaker: Dieter Lüst

09:45 → 10:30 Overview Talk RA B

Speaker: Dorothee Schaile

Slides talk_schaile.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:45 Overview Talk RA C

Speaker: Wolfgang Hollik

11:45 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:15 Overview Talk RA D

Speaker: Siegfried Bethke

Slides talk_bethke.pdf

14:15 → 15:00 Overview Talk RA E

Speaker: Jochen Weller

15:00 → 15:30 Coffee break

15:30 → 16:15 Overview Talk RA F

Speaker: Andrea Merloni

Slides talk_merloni.pdf

16:15 → 17:00 Overview Talk RA G

Speaker: Roland Diehl