Opening and Welcome

• Stephan Paul (TUM)
• Andreas Burkert (LMU)

Are leptons less universal than we thought ?

• Thomas Kuhr (LMU)

In the standard model of particle physics the couplings of leptons are assumed to be equal. While this is supported by many measurements, recent results challenge the assumption of lepton flavor universality. The experimental hints for new physics contributions to lepton couplings will be reviewed and approaches pursued at the ORIGINS cluster to address the open question of lepton flavor universality will be presented, with focus on the Belle II experiment.

The future of experimental particle physics

• Halina Abramowicz (Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel)

CN-6 Investment Highlight: The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) and ORIGINS II

• Elisa Resconi (TUM)

CN-2 Investment Highlight: Space based spectroscopy of exoplanets with Twinkle

• Barbara Ercolano

The Quest for Cosmic Dawn: Finger Crossed for JWST - CANCELLED

• Richard Ellis (University College London)

CN-3 Dark Matter Overview

• Mathias Garny (TUM)

The Dark Matter Data Center

• Nahuel Ferreiro Iachellini (Origins)

The quest for dark matter has been puzzling scientists since over a century. The last two decades have seen no less than 20 experiments designed to directly detect dark matter in the local halo. Their sensitivities span over 5 orders of magnitude. In addition to those, hints for the presence of dark matter particles are sought-for in accelerators searches and in cosmic rays. These experiments employ different technologies and methodologies, making their analyses and combination a rather demanding task. The Dark Matter Data Center aims at bringing together the large amount of recorded data and make it easily available for the dark matter community. It offers a repository where data, methods and code are clearly presented in a unified interface for comparison, reproduction, combination and analysis. The Dark Matter Data Center is also a forum where Experimental Collaborations can directly publish their data and phenomenologists the implementation of their models, in accordance to Open Science principles.

C2PAP Highlight Talk : Monte Carlo challenges for Non Perturbative QED

• Anthony Hartin (LMU)

Non perturbative QED is used to predict beam backgrounds at the interaction point of colliders, in calculations of Schwinger pair creation and in precision QED tests with ultra-intense lasers. In order to predict these phenomena, custom built monte carlo event generators based on a suitable non perturbative theory have to be developed. One such suitable theory uses the Furry Interaction Picture, in which a background field is taken into account non perturbatively at Lagrangian level. This theory is precise, but the transition probabilities are in general, complicated. This poses a challenge for the monte carlo which struggles to implement the theory computatively. The monte carlo must in addition taken into acount the behaviour of the background field at every space-time point at which an event is generated. We introduce here just such a monte carlo package, called IPstrong, and the techniques implemented to deal with the specific challenges outlined above.

The Science Case for CubeSat Compol Mission of LRSM

• Matthias Meier (MPP)

The possibilities to investigate astrophysical compact objects are strongly limited. Due to the small size of these objects it is hardly possible to resolve their geometry. The CubeSat mission ComPol will investigate the black hole binary system Cygnus X-1. The goal is to improve its physical model by measuring the polarization of the hard X-ray spectrum. The information about the polarization can be extracted from the kinematics of the Compton scattering. A Silicon drift detector (SDD) is used as a scatterer. The SDD is stacked onto a CeBr3 calorimeter to be able to measure the full kinematics. The talk will give an overview of the underlying physics, the detector setup and the project schedule.

ORIGINS satellite missions and the future of LRSM

• Ulrich Walter (TUM)

Beam me up, Scotty - The Physics of Star Trek

• Ulrich Walter (TUM)

The Future of Exoplanet Science at LMU-Munich

• Kevin Heng (Uni Bern)

The inaugural “Chair of Theoretical Astrophysics of Extrasolar Planets” commences in August 2022 at the University Observatory Munich (USM). The chair (an ecosystem of research groups) includes 4 staff scientists working in theoretical exoplanet atmospheres, observational exoplanet astronomy, planetary & molecular geoscience (in collaboration with Prof. Dieter Braun), and computational fluid dynamics and large-scale climate modelling (in collaboration with PD Dr. Klaus Dolag and Prof. Volker Springel). They are joined by the disk and planet formation research groups of Prof. Barbara Ercolano and Prof. Til Birnstiel. In this overview talk, I will discuss the vision of this new chair, its interdisciplinary and collaborative outlook, the key scientific questions it will pursue, its operational philosophy and how it fits into the European and international research landscape. I will briefly preview the solution to a century-old mathematical problem in classical astronomy that will be discussed at the Munich Joint Astronomy colloquium on 16th December 2021.

RNA catalysis in heterogeneous reaction environments

• Hannes Mutschler (TU Dortmund)

Ligation and recombination of nucleic acids are key reactions required for both self-replication and the emergence of complex sequence information. It is therefore very likely that these reactions played a fundamental role in early stages of biology. We use different ribozyme systems as models to mimic how these reactions might have proceeded under heterogeneous reaction conditions on the early Earth. While direct ligation of oligonucleotides such as RNA requires activated substrate pools, typical chemical methods for robust and continuous substrate activation are incompatible with ribozyme catalysis. We explore scenarios for the in-situ activation of RNA substrates under reaction conditions amenable to catalysis by ligase ribozymes. We find that diamidophosphate (DAP) and imidazole drive the formation of 2′,3′-cyclic phosphate RNA mono- and oligonucleotides from monophosphorylated precursors in frozen water-ice. This long-lived activation enables iterative enzymatic assembly of increasingly larger RNAs. We also demonstrate how RNA cleavage/ligation-based recombination reactions benefit dramatically from the presence of positively charged peptide sequences, which enable the assembly of complex RNA structures from short oligonucleotides under isothermal, low-salt conditions. In summary, chemically diverse environments and primitive peptides can help nucleic acid catalysts to bridge the gap between pools of short oligomers and functional RNAs.