Physics Seminars

HIGH ENERGY SEMINARS
FALL 2009

The High Energy Seminars are in Room 2165 NPB on Tuesdays & Fridays @ 2:00pm
Contact: Dmitry Belyaev (belyaev@phys.ufl.edu) Google calendar

Click here for past seminars

OCTOBER 27 (TUE)
  Speaker Rick Field UF Physics
  Title Physics Opportunities with Early LHC Data (Part I)
  Abstract I will explain some of what we have learned from studies of "min-bias" collisions and the "underlying event" in high transverse momentum jet production and in Z-boson production at the Tevatron. I will make predictions of what "min-bias" and the "underlying event" will look like at 7 TeV, 10 TeV, and 14 TeV and discuss the reliability of the LHC predictions. In addition, I will examine some of the physics opportunities at the LHC next year.

OCTOBER 30 (FRI)
  Speaker Rick Field UF Physics
  Title Physics Opportunities with Early LHC Data (Part II)
  Abstract I will explain some of what we have learned from studies of "min-bias" collisions and the "underlying event" in high transverse momentum jet production and in Z-boson production at the Tevatron. I will make predictions of what "min-bias" and the "underlying event" will look like at 7 TeV, 10 TeV, and 14 TeV and discuss the reliability of the LHC predictions. In addition, I will examine some of the physics opportunities at the LHC next year.

NOVEMBER 6 (FRI)
  Speaker Dmitry Belyaev UF Physics
  Title Maximal Supersymmetry in Light-Cone Superspace
  Abstract Maximally supersymmetric theories arise naturally as limits of the string/M-theory. Amazingly enough, they can all be described by a single constrained (on-shell) superfield living in light-cone superspace. When the theory is also (super)conformal, it is completely determined by the (dynamical) supersymmetry transformation of the light-cone superfield. I will describe how one finds this key ingredient in the d=4 N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory and in the d=3 N=8 Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson theory.

NOVEMBER 10 (TUE)
  Speaker Hirotaka Sugawara
  Title Photon-photon collider as a precursor to ILC
  Abstract

NOVEMBER 17 or 20
  Speaker TBA
  Title
  Abstract

NOVEMBER 24 (TUE)
  Speaker Sascha Bornhauser Univ. of New Mexico
  Title Prospects for the Detection of Rapidity Gap Events in Squark Pair Production at the LHC
  Abstract

DECEMBER 4 (FRI)
  Speaker Tomislav Prokopec Univ. of Utrecht
  Title The Hubble Effective Potential
  Abstract

DECEMBER 8 (TUE)
  Speaker Bo-Sture Skagerstam Norwegian U. Sci. Tech.
  Title Photon Emission Near Superconducting Bodies and Atom Chips
  Abstract As was already pointed out by E.M. Purcell in 1948, the rate of spontaneous emission of atoms will be modified due to the presence of a dielectric body. Spontaneous emission can be thought of as a physical process, where the emission of a photon is stimulated by vacuum fluctuations. The presence of a medium will change the properties of the vacuum and, hence, also the rate for decay processes. This so called Purcell effect has been one of several central topics in the field of modern experimental cavity quantum electrodynamics.
In current investigations and engineering of nano-scale atom microtraps, this issue is also of fundamental importance since such spontaneous emission processes, due to hyperfine spin-flip transitions, have a direct bearing on the stability of atom chips.
In the present talk, we give a brief introduction to some of these issues in terms of photon emission due to a magnetic spin-flip transition of a two-level atom in the vicinity of a dielectric body like a normal conducting metal or a superconductor. In the analysis of this physical system one has to address issues like the notion of a photon propagating close to or in a dissipative medium. A simpler but analogues problem is how to quantize a damped harmonic oscillator.
For temperatures below the critical temperature of a superconductor, the corresponding spin-flip lifetime can be boosted by almost twenty orders of magnitude as compared to the case of a normal conducting body! This recent finding of ours has opened up the window for the design of new superconductor based atom chips. We also report on some recent work on the related attractive (!) Casimir-Polder force.