Dr
Luigi Tibaldo
(KIPAC-SLAC, Stanford University)
15/08/2013, 09:10
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Cosmic rays are a probe of the most energetic processes in the Universe and may encode signatures of dark-matter particles annihilation or decay. The Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope indirectly traces cosmic rays throughout the Galaxy thanks to the diffuse gamma-ray emission produced by inelastic collisions of cosmic-ray nuclei with interstellar gas and by...
Alex Drlica-Wagner
(Stanford Universty)
15/08/2013, 09:34
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are some of the most dark-matter-dominated objects observed. Their proximity, high dark matter content, and lack of astrophysical backgrounds make them one of the most promising targets for the indirect detection of dark matter via gamma rays. Here we report on gamma-ray observations of 25 Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies...
David Williams
(UC Santa Cruz)
15/08/2013, 10:30
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be a new observatory for the study of very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray sources. It is designed to achieve an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity in the ~30 GeV to ~100 TeV energy band compared to currently operating instruments (VERITAS, MAGIC, HESS). The design and capabilities of CTA will be described. The presentation focuses on how CTA...
Dr
Matthew Wood
(SLAC)
15/08/2013, 10:54
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
A leading candidate for astrophysical dark matter (DM) is a weakly
interacting particle with a mass in the range from 10 GeV to 10 TeV.
The pair annihilation of DM in environments with high DM density such
as in the cores of galaxies could produce gamma-ray signals detectable
with space- or ground-based gamma-ray observatories. The Cherenkov
Telescope Array (CTA) is a future ground-based...
Dr
Andrew Smith
(University of Utah Physics and Astronomy)
15/08/2013, 11:18
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
In the cosmological paradigm, cold dark matter (DM) dominates the mass content of the Universe and is present at every scale. Candidates for DM include many extensions of the standard model, with a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) in the mass range from 50 GeV to greater than 10 TeV. The self-annihilation of WIMPs in astrophysical regions of high DM density can produce secondary...
Prof.
Reshmi Mukherjee Mukherjee
(Barnard College)
15/08/2013, 11:42
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Relativistic jets are extremely powerful outflows of collimated plasma that may be seen in active galactic nuclei (AGN), gamma-ray bursts, and X-ray binaries. AGN are believed to be powered by the accretion of matter onto a super-massive black hole (SMBH). The observed similarities (in morphology and spectrum) of jets from black holes of different masses suggests that they share a common...
Dr
William Shepherd
(UC Santa cruz)
15/08/2013, 13:30
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
I will present a calculation of the thermal decoupling temperature and implied dark matter halo mass distribution cutoff within the framework of effective theories of dark matter. For the first time, this calculation has been considered for all interactions which respect parity, whether the dark matter couples dominantly to leptons, quarks, or both, and including the relevant couplings to...
Storm Emma
(UC Santa Cruz)
15/08/2013, 13:54
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Annihilation of dark matter can result in the production of stable Standard Model particles including electrons and positrons that, in the presence of magnetic fields, lose energy via synchrotron radiation, observable as radio emission. Galaxy clusters are excellent targets to search for or to constrain the rate of dark matter annihilation, as they are both massive and dark matter dominated....
Ahmed Ismail
(SLAC)
15/08/2013, 14:18
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The search for and identification of neutralino dark matter in supersymmetry requires a multi-pronged approach with important roles played by collider, direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments. We summarize the sensitivity of such searches at the LHC, combined with those by Fermi, CTA, IceCube/DeepCore, COUPP and XENON1T, to such particles within the context of the 19-parameter...
Dr
Farinaldo Queiroz
(University of California Santa Cruz)
15/08/2013, 14:42
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Planck and WMAP9 satellites, as well as the ATACAMA and South Pole telescopes, have recently presented results on the angular power spectrum of the comic microwave background. Data tentatively point to the existence of an extra radiation component in the early universe. Here, we show that this extra component can be mimicked by dark matter particles whose majority is cold, but with a small...
Kazuyoshi KITAZAWA
(RISP Japan)
15/08/2013, 15:06
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
A long time behavior of the candidate for dark energy which satisfies the latest result of WMAP (9 Years: ฮฉฮ=0.721ยฑ0.025) and is considered as one of the degenerates 1) of ur-Higgs boson which has appeared as a mother for SM Higgs boson 2), is studied. It is shown that such a dark energy of almost non-mass fullerene will disrupt gradually into smaller ones consist of several ฯ mesons by...
Prof.
Priscilla Cushman
(University of Minnesota)
15/08/2013, 16:00
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search is sensitive to WIMP interactions with target nuclei in germanium and silicon crystals held at ~50 mK. Detailed information contained in both phonon and ionization signals are used to create a WIMP-search region with backgrounds of less than one event. Raw data taken with the CDMS-II detectors was reprocessed with a pulse reconstruction algorithm which...
Ms
Monica Pangilinan
(Brown University)
15/08/2013, 16:35
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The fundamental nature of dark matter is one of the key open questions that is currently being probed at underground sites worldwide. The LZ experiment is a next generation liquid Xenon detector that will continue this search, building upon the expertise and experience provided by the LUX experiment. The proposed LZ detector will be a 7-ton liquid Xe TPC that will use the current...
Prof.
Nepomuk Otte
(Georgia Institute of Technology)
16/08/2013, 08:45
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Special and general relativity extended our understanding of the concepts of space and time, two of the most basic topics of investigation of modern physics. However, quantum theory has shown that there is more to learn regarding these concepts. Considerations of how to combine the concepts of quantum mechanics and gravity (quantum gravity) indicate that the Planck scale is a ``natural...
Peter Karn
(UC Irvine)
16/08/2013, 09:09
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a gamma-ray experiment currently under construction at Sierra Negra in Mexico. When complete it will consist of a 22,000 square meter array of 300 water Cherenkov detectors. Although HAWC is designed to study gamma rays from galactic and extra-galactic sources, the large volume of instrumented water (each tank holds ~188,000 liters) gives...
Dr
Tareq AbuZayyad
(University of Utah)
16/08/2013, 09:33
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Telescope Array Low-Energy Extension (TALE) is a hybrid, Air Fluorescence Detector (FD) / Scintillator Array, designed to study cosmic ray initiated showers at energies above ~3x10^16 eV. Located in the western Utah desert, the TALE FD is comprised of 10 telescopes which cover the elevation range 31-58 deg in addition to 14 telescopes with elevation coverage of 3-31 deg.
As with all...
Dr
Beth Reid
(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
16/08/2013, 10:30
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, now 90% complete, is measuring the three-dimensional cosmic structure with 1.35 million new redshifts. Galaxy clustering measurements provide constraints on the cosmic expansion history through the baryon acoustic oscillation feature. In addition, the imprint of galaxy peculiar velocities on the observed galaxy clustering, "redshift-space...
Mariana Vargas-Magana
(Carnegie Mellon University)
16/08/2013, 10:54
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The dominant effect of the nonlinear evolution of the density field is the smoothing of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) feature, the standard reconstruction technique has shown to reverse this smoothing recovering the linear density field. The standard reconstruction technique has been tested with simulations and very recently, it has been applied to SDSS galaxy data enabling a...
Michael Levi
(LBNL)
16/08/2013, 11:18
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The mid-scale dark energy spectroscopic instrument (MS-DESI) is currently in conceptual design. MS-DESI will be an exceptionally powerful facility for the Cosmic Frontier research program, mapping the Universe in three dimensions by massively parallel measurements of galaxy redshifts. The experiment will be on sky by 2018 to study dark energy as a Stage-IV project exploiting the baryon...
Mr
Carlos Cunha
(Stanford University)
16/08/2013, 14:30
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011 was awarded for the discovery that the
expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Yet the physical origin of
cosmic acceleration remains a mystery. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) aims
to address the questions: why is the expansion speeding up? Is cosmic
acceleration due to dark energy or does it require a modification of
General Relativity? If dark...
Prof.
Klaus Honscheid
(Ohio State University)
16/08/2013, 14:54
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Starting this September the Dark Energy Survey collaboration will use 525 nights over five years with the Blanco 4-m telescope at CTIO to image 5000 square degrees of the sky in five optical filter bands. The primary science goal is to understand the properties of dark energy using four complementary techniques: galaxy cluster counts, weak lensing, angular power spectrum and type Ia...
Prof.
Klaus Honscheid
(Ohio State University)
16/08/2013, 15:18
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
During fall 2012 the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration installed and commissioned DECam, a 570 mega-pixel optical and near-infrared camera with a large 3 sq. deg. field of view, set at the prime focus of the 4-meter Blanco telescope in CTIO, Chile. In the course of the next five years DECam will map an entire octant of the southern sky to unprecedented depth, measuring the position on the...
Dr
Marcelle Soares-Santos
(Fermilab)
16/08/2013, 15:54
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Galaxy clusters are one of the four key cosmic acceleration probes used by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to measure cosmological parameters with unprecedented precision. DES has recently completed commissioning of its instrument and accomplished a successful science verification data taking phase. The survey proper will soon begin. In this talk, I review the motivation for using clusters of...
Prof.
Klaus Honscheid
(Ohio State University)
16/08/2013, 16:18
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
DECam is the newly commissioned imager of the Dark Energy Survey (DES)with a very large Field-of-View (FoV) of more than 3 square degrees. During the DES science verification phase, we targeted four massive galaxy clusters visible from CTIO to measure their weak-lensing effect. We will present some of the first science-quality images from DECam and present the photometry and shape analysis...
Kyle Barbary
(ANL)
16/08/2013, 16:42
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a five-year astronomical survey,
starting in Fall 2013. DES is specifically designed to study dark
energy, using a new 570-megapixel digital imager, the Dark Energy
Camera, mounted on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at CTIO in Chile. It
will do this using four major complimentary dark energy probes, one of
which is Type Ia supernovae. As part of DES, a...
Prof.
Klaus Honscheid
(Ohio State University)
16/08/2013, 17:06
Cosmic Frontier
oral presentation
Weak lensing measurements are expected to be powerful probes of the physics of the dark sector. While the shear component of the lensing distortion has been detected and analyzed in several studies to date, the magnification component has received relatively little attention. We will show how an understanding of galaxy-scale physics can be used to dramatically improve both the systematic and...