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Society of Physics Students |
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Columbia University in the City of New York |
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Spring 2006
April 27, 2006 Speakers: Professor John Parsons, Columbia University Talk Title: Particle Physics at the High Energy Frontier Abstract: Despite the great successes of the Standard Model in describing the physics of elementary particles, there are a number of problems which suggest that it does not represent the final answer. Indeed, a great variety of models including new physics have been proposed, including supersymmetry, new strong dynamics, or even additional spacetime dimensions. On-going experiments at high energy hadron colliders, and in particular those under construction at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will provide access to the energy scales where we expect to be able to start to answer some of the outstanding questions.
April 13, 2006 Speakers: John Dwyer and Joseph Thurakal, Columbia University Talk Title: Prospects of Gravitational Wave Exploration via Evolutionary Computing Abstract: Techniques of evolutionary computing have been proven useful for many diverse fields in science and engineering. Evolutionary computing can be conceptualized as an optimization procedure that incorporates the principles of natural selection. Because of the noisy and discontinuous nature of the LIGO data, evolutionary computing would be a good approach to developing efficient and effective search techniques for gravitational waves. As a proof of principle experiment, we have created an evolutionary program to produce search algorithms for simulated waves in the midst of realistic LIGO data. The results of this experiment show that signal search algorithms produced by this method are significantly improving as the program is run. The success of this experiment has sparked plans for other variations of this program that will also be discussed.
March 30, 2006 Speaker: Laura Gladstone, Columbia University Talk Title: The Wonders of MiniBooNE Abstract: The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab is a neutrino oscillation (nu_mu --> nu_e) search. The detector is a 12m-diameter tank of ultra-pure mineral oil lined with 8 phototubes. The phototubes are the only detector element (no drift chambers etc). The oscillation signal that MiniBooNE searches for is extremely rare, and thus some backgrounds which would otherwise be negligible are important to accurately describe. This talk will give an overview of neutrino oscillations and MiniBooNE, discuss the tests to find the angular dependence of the response of the phototubes, and outline some current studies to describe the background from electromagnetic decays of delta baryons. It should be about 40 minutes.
February 16, 2006 Speaker: Professor Chris Wiggins, Columbia University Talk Title: Introduction to Quantitative Biology Abstract: Professor Wiggins will give an overview of quantitative biology and discuss why it is an interesting field to go into.
February 2, 2006 Speaker: Elliot Kaplan, Undergraduate at Columbia University Talk Title: Plasma Physics 101 Abstract: I will be giving a brief introduction to plasma physics. I hope to cover--over the course of 45 min or so--the basic definition of plasma, and some of the single particle dynamics that comes into play in laboratory and natural plasmas. Ideally this lecture is a sensible--albeit less than fully rigorous--compression of the first two lectures of any plasma physics course. Outline as follows: 1. Overview of plasma, where do we find it and why do we care 2. Definition of Plasma: Quasineutral collection of charged particles that exhibits collective behavior a. Definition of Quasineutral b. Definition of collective behavior 3. Single Particle Dynamics a. E x B drifts b. grad B drifts c. magnetic mirrors i. magnetic mirrors in nature (Aurora Borealis) ii. magnetic effects in the lab (banana orbits)
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