SNOLAB Seminar Series

After the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has turned from a discovery machine to a precision machine. The highly boosted events measured by the LHC experiments are, for the first time, providing us a window on the details of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. A crucial condition to maximise the reach of these studies is a profound understanding of the theoretical implications of perturbative Quantum Field Theory, and in particular of Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD), for the physics of hadronic collisions at the LHC. In this talk, I will provide an account of the opportunities and the challenges that precision physics at the LHC can offer, focusing in particular on the recent developments in our understanding of higher order calculations in perturbative Quantum Field Theory and how they can help us understand the Higgs sector of the Standard Model.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has provided unique insights into the Universe's biggest explosions over the past 12 years. With thousands of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and hundreds by the Large Area Telescope (LAT), we have learned about the broad properties of the populations of these events and got unique insights into their emission mechanisms, environment, and physical properties. In this seminar, I'll review highlights of GRB science from the Fermi mission at low (keV) and high (GeV) energy, as well as the recent discovery of very-high (TeV) energy emission from GRB 180720B and GRB 140114C observed by the Cherenkov Telescopes of the H.E.S.S. and MAGIC experiments, respectively

Spin and hybrid spin-charge qubits have been a long-term goal of the fields of Spintronics and Quantum Information. Such a qubit in an array would ideally interact separately from other qubits and “tunably” with a Microwave field. In this way, a single qubit may be turned “on”, interact with its environment to acquire information (for example, flip a spin state), and be turned “off” so it may indefinitely store that information. The necessary tunability for such a task has been demonstrated in a single hole of a p-type GaAs/AlGaAs Double Quantum Dot (DQD) with strong Spin-Orbit Interaction (SOI), in which the interdot tunnel coupling is strong so that hybridized quantum molecular states form [1]. If the interdot coupling is reduced, this form of tunability is lost. However, a new phenomenon may permit tunability: the weak interdot coupling gives rise to distinct dot-specific quantum dot g-factors smoothly connected by the spin-orbit interaction. By sweeping gate voltages such that we choose which dot is being probed, a qubit may be turned “on” or “off” as necessary. During my work terms with the low-temperature Quantum Physics Group at the National Research Council of Canada, I investigated the appearance of dot-specific g-factors and partially characterized the double quantum dot system using a theoretical model.