High Energy Physics

Reflecting on 10 years of collaboration with the Perimeter Institute, I will discuss one of many exciting cosmological probes opened up by high-resolution observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the kinetic Sunyaev Zeldovich (kSZ) effect.  PI has and continues to serve as an incubator for novel approaches with this probe that will shed light on the initial conditions of the universe and the particle nature of dark matter.  Realizing the full potential of the kSZ effect requires new data.  I will report on new results from the Simons Observatory, a path-breaking CMB survey that recently saw first light.

Over the past 25 years, particle physics has grown and thrived by making connections with other fields of physics and the physical sciences in general. As we look forward to the next 25 years, the flexible toolbox of high-energy physics can be put to use on a number of problems outside the traditional application of collider physics, and we should keep an open mind and go where the data leads us. I will give several examples of fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations in particle physics from my own research career, including condensed matter physics, quantum chemistry, quantum sensing, and machine learning.

Fast Radio Bursts are a recently discovered phenomenon consisting of brief (typically few millisecond) bursts of radio waves coming from far outside our Milky Way galaxy, indeed from cosmological distances. Their origin is unknown. I will review what is known about these mysterious sources, and how they can act as novel probes of the matter distribution in the Universe. I will focus on results from the CHIME Fast Radio Burst Project, which uses a new Canadian digital radio telescope that is revolutionizing our view of the fast transient sky. I will also introduce the CHIME/FRB Outriggers, which will enable precise sky localizations for >1000 CHIME FRBs, hence permit host galaxy ID and redshift determinations.

To date only one astronomical event has been observed in both gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves -- the merger of two neutron stars known as GW170817. This event was detected in gamma rays simultaneously with gravitational waves, but was poorly localized initially. No other counterparts were detected until localization was improved leading to an 11 hour dearth of data in other EM wavelengths. GW170817 also demonstrated that realistic neutron star mergers may have off-axis GRB observations that could be sub-threshold in modern instruments. Here we describe an ongoing coordinated effort to detect binary neutron stars before they merge using gravitational waves and to slew NASA's Swift observatory to catch prompt potentially sub-threshold GRB and x-ray emission. If successful, this ambitious project would pin down the event location allowing for prompt follow-up observations across all other wavelengths. Multimessenger observations of binary neutron star mergers (gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves) have deep implications for nuclear physics, strong gravity and cosmology.