Scientific Series

The quest to understand the nature of dark matter is entering a remarkable data-rich era. Hypothetical stable, electrically neutral particles with TeV-scale mass and weak-strength couplings are a simple, theoretically appealing, but untested candidate for the dark matter. I will summarize recent results in both direct and indirect searches for dark matter, and highlight what upcoming data may teach us. I will also discuss the key role of accelerator-based experiments and novel astrophysical measurements in understanding dark matter and its connection to Standard Model physics. The prospects are particularly rich if dark matter interacts through new, non-Standard-Model dynamics, as recent cosmic-ray data may suggest. I will discuss a range of collider-based searches and fixed-target experiments under development to search for this dynamics, and the complementary sensitivity of searches for cosmic rays originating from dark matter annihilation in the sun.

The LHC will explore fundamental physics at a new energy frontier. A spectrum of new particles at the TeV scale is expected on two theoretical grounds: explaining dark matter and generating the electroweak scale. Understanding the properties of such particles can clarify the nature of dark matter, the origin of the weak scale, symmetries of nature, and the multiverse. These particles can be discovered by identifying collision events characteristic of new physics in LHC data. Their properties can be measured by characterizing such new physics events in terms of decay modes and basic kinematics. I will describe how this can be accomplished and exciting possibilities for what we may discover.

Final states involving hadronic jets are an important background to new physics processes in colliders, as well as a probe of QCD over a large range of energies. Because the physics of jets involves multiple energy scales, they are both complex theoretically and ideally suited to study using effective field theory techniques. In this talk I will discuss some recent progress in using effective field theory to describe the physics of jets.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the modern needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes involving spacecraft navigation, geodesy, time transfer and etc. Series of recent experiments have successfully tested general relativity to a remarkable precision. Various experimental techniques were used to test relativistic gravity in the solar system namely spacecraft Doppler tracking, planetary ranging, lunar laser ranging, dedicated gravity experiments in space and many ground-based efforts. We will discuss the recent progress in the tests of relativistic gravity and motivation for the new generation of high-accuracy gravitational experiments in space. We also discuss the advances in our understanding of fundamental physics that are anticipated in the near future and evaluate the discovery potential of the recently proposed solar system gravitational experiments.

15 years ago Ishibashi, Kawai and collaborators developed non-critical string field theory, starting with the formalism of dynamical triangulations. The same construction can be repeated using causal dynamical triangulations, and in this case one can actually sum explicitly over all genera. The theory can be viewed as stochastic quantization of space, proper (world sheet) time playing the role of stochastic time.

Ever since there's been money, there have been people trying to counterfeit it, and governments trying to stop them. In 1969, the physicist Stephen Wiesner raised the remarkable possibility of money whose authenticity would be guaranteed by the laws of quantum mechanics. However, the question of whether one can have secure quantum money that anyone (not only the bank) can verify has remained open for forty years. In this talk, I'll tell you about progress on the question over the last two years. (1) I'll show that no publicly-verifiable quantum money scheme can have security based on quantum physics alone: like in most cryptography, one also needs a computational hardness assumption. (2) I'll show that one can have quantum money that remains hard to counterfeit, even if a counterfeiter gains access to a "black box" for verifying the money. (3) I'll describe a candidate quantum money scheme I proposed last spring, and how that scheme was recently broken by Lutomirski et al. I'll also discuss a new class of schemes that might evade the existing attacks -- schemes with the bizarre property that not even the bank can prepare the same bill twice. The talk is designed to be accessible to those without a quantum information background. Reference for (1)-(2): S. Aaronson, "Quantum copy-protection and quantum money," in Proceedings of CCC'2009, http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/noclone-ccc.pdf. Reference for (3): A. Lutomirski, S. Aaronson, E. Farhi, D. Gosset, A. Hassidim, J. Kelner, and P. Shor. Breaking and making quantum money: toward a new quantum cryptographic protocol, Proceedings of Innovations in Computer Science (ICS), 2010. http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3825.

The radio-metric tracking data received from the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft from the distances between 20--70 astronomical units from the Sun has consistently indicated the presence of a small, anomalous, blue-shifted Doppler frequency drift that limited the accuracy of the orbit reconstruction for these vehicles. This drift was interpreted as a sunward acceleration of aP = (8.74 1.33)  1010 m/s2 for each particular spacecraft. This signal has become known as the Pioneer anomaly; the nature of this anomaly is currently being investigated. Recently new Pioneer 10 and 11 radio-metric Doppler and flight telemetry data became available. The newly available Doppler data set is much larger when compared to the data used in previous investigations and is the primary source for new investigation of the anomaly. In addition, the flight telemetry files, original project documentation, and newly developed software tools are now used to reconstruct the engineering history of spacecraft. With the help of this information, a thermal model of the Pioneer vehicles is being developed to study the contribution of thermal recoil force acting on the two spacecraft. The goal of the ongoing efforts is to evaluate the effect of the on-board systems on the spacecrafts' trajectories and possibly identify the nature of this anomaly. The current status of these investigations will be discussed. Besides the Pioneer anomaly, there are other intriguing puzzles in the solar system dynamics still awaiting a proper explanation, notably the, so-called, “fly-by anomaly”, that occurred during Earth gravity assists performed by several interplanetary spacecraft. We will discuss the observed effect, the conditions that led to its observation and will elaborate on the potential causes of this anomaly. This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

While the properties of gravity, and its consistency with General Relativity (GR), are well tested on solar system scales, within our system and the decay of binary pulsar orbits, they are, by comparison, poorly tested on cosmic scales. This is of particular interest as we try to understand the origins of cosmic acceleration, and whether they are a signature of deviations from GR. Using the latest measurements of the universe's expansion history, twinned with the evolution of large scale structure, we discuss the current constraints on gravity's behavior on the largest scales observable today.

Standard inflationary theory predicts that primordial fluctuations in the universe were nearly Gaussian random. Therefore, searches for, and limits on, primordial nongaussianity are some of the most fundamental tests of inflation and the early universe in general. I first briefly review the history of its measurements from the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and large-scale structure in the universe. I then present results from recent work where effects of primordial nongaussianity on the distribution of largest virialized objects was studied numerically and analytically. We found that the bias of dark matter halos takes strong scale dependence in nongaussian cosmological models. Therefore, measurements of scale dependence of the bias, using various tracers of large-scale structure, can - and do - constrain primordial nongaussianity more than an order of magnitude better than previously thought.

The graph isomorphism (GI) problem plays a central role in the theory of computational complexity and has importance in physics and chemistry as well. While no general efficient algorithm for solving GI is known, it is unlikely to be NP-complete; in this regard it is similar to the factoring problem, for which Shor has developed an efficient quantum algorithm. In this talk I will discuss our investigations of quantum particles walking on graphs and their implications for possible algorithms for GI. We find that single-particle quantum random walks fail to distinguish some nonequivalent graphs that can be distinguished by random walks with two interacting particles. The implications of these observations for classical and quantum algorithms for GI will be discussed.

It is usually assumed that dark matter direct detection is sensitive to a large fraction of the dark matter (DM) velocity distribution. I will explain an alternative form of dark matter-nucleus scattering which only probes a narrow range of DM velocities due to the existence of a resonance, a DM-nucleus bound state, in the scattering - resonant dark matter (rDM). The scattering cross section becomes highly element dependent, has increased modulation and as a result can explain the DAMA/LIBRA results whilst not being in conflict with other direct detection experiments. I will describe a simple model that realizes the dynamics of rDM, where the DM is the neutral component of a fermionic weak triplet whose charged partners differ in mass by approximately 10 MeV.

The simplest gravity duals for quantum critical theories with 'Lifshitz' scale invariance admit a marginally relevant deformation. We will explore the holographic renormalization of such theories, including this deformation. Additionally we explore how this holographic renormalization illuminates the physics of black holes in the qunatum critical regime.