Talks

This session will introduce the grad student seminar series, include an interactive session focusing on thoughts and ideas for effective preparation and presentation, and will gauge students' interest about upcoming science outreach activities.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/95397824623?pwd=LzViSVBpTXJzcjZXbjlhdzZKMk9Ndz09

What relations are there between the various ways of wrangling with quantum gravity? String theory is now much more than just a theory of strings -- branes and braneworlds abound. Some kind of effective theory for the familiar world needs to emerge. Are there ways that one could glimpse underlying structure from aspects of an effective theory? That happens for pions -- is there anything like that for gravity? Effective theories also involve higher derivatives, and those can summon up spirits (i.e. ghosts) from the vasty deep. Do asymptotic freedom or asymptotic safety give ways to exorcise them? And what might the effective theory tell us about the earliest times?

Numerical simulations of collision events within the ATLAS experiment have played a pivotal role in shaping the design of future experiments and analyzing ongoing ones. However, the quest for accuracy in describing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collisions comes at an imposing computational cost, with projections estimating the need for millions of CPU-years annually during the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) run. Simulating a single LHC event with Geant4 currently devours around 1000 CPU seconds, with calorimeter simulations imposing substantial computational demands. To address this challenge, we propose a Quantum-Assisted deep generative model. Our model marries a variational autoencoder (VAE) on the exterior with a Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) in the latent space, delivering enhanced expressiveness compared to conventional VAEs. The RBM nodes and connections are meticulously engineered to enable the use of qubits and couplers on D-Wave's Pegasus Quantum Annealer. We also provide preliminary insights into the requisite infrastructure for large-scale deployment.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97724484247?pwd=Witua1lKcHlrc3JDNHNDWXpHYkVvQT09

Higgs coupling deviations from Standard Model predictions contain information about two scales of Nature: that of new physics responsible for the deviation, and the scale where new bosons must appear. The two can coincide, but they do not have to. The scale of new bosons can be calculated by going beyond an effective field theory description of the coupling deviation. I will discuss model-independent upper bounds on the scale of new bosons for deviations in Higgs to WW and ZZ couplings, and explain how any measured deviation at present or future colliders requires the existence of new bosons within experimental reach. This has potentially interesting implications for naturalness.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97203814123?pwd=U3F3N2xxTmJSQmxIQ0Rib3ZwN3Fldz09

Recent observations point to a surprisingly economical description of the universe on both very small and very large scales. Stimulated by these findings, Boyle and I have proposed a new, potentially more complete theoretical framework than currently popular paradigms. Our search has so far led to 1) the simplest-yet explanation for the cosmic dark matter, soon to be tested by galaxy surveys, 2) a thermodynamic explanation for the large scale geometry of the cosmos, based on the concept of gravitational entropy à la Hawking, 3) a new account of the big bang singularity as a “mirror” enforcing CPT-symmetric boundary conditions, realising Penrose's "Weyl curvature hypothesis" and 4) a new mechanism for cancelling the divergent vacuum energy and the trace anomalies in the Standard Model (SM). The new mechanism successfully predicts the primordial density perturbations in terms of the SM’s gauge couplings. It also explains why there are 3 generations of elementary particles, each including a RH neutrino, one of which is stable and comprises the dark matter. I’ll outline the challenges the new picture faces and the opportunities it presents, ranging from solving the gauge hierarchy problem to an improved description of quantum gravity along with prospective observational tests.