Scientific Series

Astrophysical observations suggest that the majority of matter in the Universe is made up of novel Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).  Such WIMPs are often predicted by extensions to the Standard Model.  Efforts have been underway for more than two decades to detect WIMPs directly in detectors on earth.  The challenge is great because of the small energies involved and the low interaction rates. The field has been driven by progress in detectors able to identify radioactive backgrounds. I will review how recent enthusiasm for low-mass WIMPs, which was generated by tantalizing hints seen in several experiments, has waned.  Lastly, I will discuss various ideas to check the longstanding DAMA WIMP-detection claim, including the feasibility of alkali-halide cryogenic detectors.

Can we learn about New Physics with astronomical and astro-particle data? Understanding how this is possible is key to unraveling one of the most pressing mysteries at the interface of cosmology and particle physics: the fundamental, particle nature of the dark matter.
I will discuss some of the recent puzzling findings in astro-particle and astronomical observations that might be related to signals from dark matter. I will first review the status of explanations to the cosmic-ray positron excess, emphasizing how we might be able to discriminate between astrophysical sources and dark matter. 
I will then discuss the evidence for an X-ray line at 3.5 keV, and present new results on systematic effects and on the role of previously underestimated astrophysical lines.
Finally, I will discuss a reported excess of gamma rays from the central regions of the Galaxy.  I will address the question of whether we are possibly observing a signal from dark matter annihilation, how to test this hypothesis, and which astrophysical mechanisms constitute the relevant background.

 

I will discuss a new duality between strongly coupled and weakly coupled condensed matter systems. It can be obtained by combining the gauge-gravity duality with analog gravity. In my talk I will explain how one arrives at the new duality, what it can be good for, and what questions this finding raises.

The spatially-indirect exciton condensates (SIXC) is an interesting ordered electronic state in which coherence is spontaneously established between particles localized in separate two-dimensional layers. I will discuss some of the properties SIXCs, commenting on their counterflow superfluidity, their collective excitations, and on similarities and differences relative to superconductors, easy-plane ferromagnets and anti-ferromagnets, and the standard model of particle physics.  Finally I will discuss the prospects of achieving SIXC states at elevated temperatures in multi-layer 2D material systems.   

The standard theory of topological insulators and superfluids (or superconductors) assumes that the fermionic elementary excitations in these systems – electrons in the insulator and Bogoliubov quasiparticles in the superfluid – do not interact with one another. In this talk I will discuss extensions of this theory to include the effects of interparticle interactions on the topological surface states of 3D topological insulators and superfluids. First, I will argue that bulk quantum fluctuations of the superfluid order parameter in the only 3D topological superfluid known to date, 3He-B, can generate an effective two-body interaction between the surface Majorana fermions.

Possible consequences of this interaction will be discussed. Second, I will propose an extension of the phenomenological Landau theory of Fermi liquids to the surface states of 3D topological insulators, leading to the concept of helical Fermi liquid.

 It is well known - to those who know it - that noise and randomness can enhance signal resolution. I'll present an easy-to-follow example from digital audio that illustrates the way in which adding noise ("dither") prior to measurement enhances the accuracy with which we are able to distinguish the features of the sound or image. I will then explore the way in which the environmental interactions prior to measurement ordinarily characterized as environment-induced decoherence may play a similar role.  The paradoxical conclusion is that the quasiclassical behavior associated with such systems may be a more accurate representation of the quantum world than what we think of as fully "quantum" behavior, which may in turn be artifactual, the result of errors similar to those introduced by the discretization (also known as "quantization") of data in digital audio and imaging.

Main properties of generalized contraction methods of Lie algebras, known also as expansion methods, are briefly introduced. Between some of their physical applications, one might study the nature of solutions in theories constructed with those expanded algebras. In particular, as we are interested in solutions that could be relevant in the context of AdS/CFT and Holographic Superconductors, we would like to study the holographic QFT dual to Chern-Simons gravity for an expansion of AdS algebra. As a first step, we studied charged static spherically symmetric BH solutions of a CS theory for the most simple extension of AdS symmetry: AdS×U(1). It is shown that in this kind of higher dimensional gravity, degeneracy in some sectors of the space of solutions can appear. In fact, arbitrary functions remain undetermined after the field equations are imposed. This is related to an increase in local symmetries and it is shown that the knowledge of these "accidental symmetries" can help to formulate a simple criterion that avoids unwanted degenerate ansatze. Finally, main properties of Pure Lovelock gravity are presented and some issues about black hole solutions this theory are also discussed.

Astrophysical observations of the structure of galaxies and clusters are no longer simply proving the existence of DM, but have sharpened into a discovery tool probing the particle physics of dark matter.  I discuss small scale structure anomalies for cold dark matter and their possible implications for dark matter physics, such as the existence of forces in the dark sector.   New results on cluster scales provide a new important handle for constraining dark matter's particle interactions.

High resolution CMB experiments, such as ACT, SPT, and the Planck satellite are making precision measurements of the secondary anisotropies caused by the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect from galaxy clusters. However, our ability to obtain cosmological information from this tSZ signal is limited by our theoretical understanding of the baryons in clusters and groups. I will discuss how cross correlation methods are providing new windows into the messy “Gastrophysics” of the intracluster medium and the potential for these methods to constrain various cosmological parameters.

Recent progress on the construction of holographic lattices and its applications to AdS/CMT correspondence will be briefly reviewed. Our special interests will focus on the building of bulk geometry of gravity whose holographic duals exhibit metal-insulator transitions (MIT).  In particular, the Peierls phase transition induced by charge density waves is implemented in a holographic manner. The holographic entanglement entropy close to quantum critical points will be discussed as well.

In an approach to quantum gravity where space-time arises from coarse graining of fundamentally discrete structures, black hole formation and subsequent evaporation could be described by a unitary evolution without the problems encountered by standard remnant scenarios or the schemes where information is assumed to come out with the radiation while semiclassical evaporation (firewalls and complementarity). I point out the possibility that the final state is purified by correlations with the fundamental pre-geometric structures (in the sense of Wheeler) which are available in such approaches, and, like defects in the underlying space-time weave, can carry zero energy.