Invisibles14 is the third thematic workshop organized in the context of the FP7 funded INVISIBLES ITN (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-ITN, PITN-GA-2011-289442-INVISIBLES), which focuses on Neutrino, Dark Matter and Dark Energy phenomenology and their connection, and more generally on physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
The "Invisibles School 2014" precedes the third thematic workshop organised in the context of the FP7 funded INVISIBLES ITN (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-ITN, PITN-GA-2011-289442-INVISIBLES), which focuses on Neutrino, Dark Matter and Dark Energy phenomenology and their connection, and more in general on physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
On October 8th the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2013 to Francois Englert (from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Belgium) and to Peter Higgs (from the University of Edinburgh in UK) "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)".
During the early phase of the Universe (from three to twenty minutes after the big bang)
primordial nucleosynthesis produced the lightest atomic nuclei: deuterium, helium and lithium. Measuring the primordial abundances of these elements provides a window on the early evolution of the Universe and a probe of particle physics (neutrino physics and more) beyond the standard model.
So, how much deuterium was there in the primordial phase of our Universe?
This information can tell us how much atomic matter (i.e., baryons) there is all in all in the Universe today! This latter quantity has recently been measured with great precision by the Planck satellite, according to which baryonic matter constitutes only the
Our Invisibles colleague Prof. J. J. Gomez-Cadenas (University of Valencia) has been awarded the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant. The grant will support the experimental quest on neutrinoless double-beta decay in the experiment NEXT, that he proposed and leads.
Prof. Silvia Pascoli, PI of the UDUR node of the ITN- Invisibles and a Professor of Physics at the University of Durham and deputy director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology has been awarded the 2013 Occhialini Medal and Prize.
The award is given for her “major contributions to the study of, and leadership in, the field of neutrino phenomenology”.
Neutrinos are the most elusive of all Standard Model particles due to the fact that they interact extremely weakly with all other forms of matter. Yet, they are the most abundant particles in our Universe (besides photons), which makes it of great importance to measure and understand their properties in detail. One of their most astonishing features was proposed by Ettore Majorana in the 1930s, suggesting that, unlike all other elementary constituents of the Cosmos, neutrinos could be their own antiparticles.
Deep under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, the GERDA experiment is searching for the neutrinoless double beta decay, a process which, if discovered, would prove Majorana's conjecture. In normal beta decay, a neutron inside a nucleus decays into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. For some nuclei, such as germanium-76, this process is energetically forbidden. However, the simultaneous decay of two neutrons with the emission of two electrons and two antineutrinos is possible and has been measured to have a half-life of about 100 billion times the age of the Universe.
An original exhibition exploring science with art.
Opening by Prof. Sir Arnold Wolfendale FRS.
Invisibles Art Group: Steve Sproates, Chrissie Morgan, Bruce Burn, Catherine Yates, Bill Harris, Dawn Douglas, Michael Grogan, Angela Sandwith and Maggie Parker.
Place: Lumley Castle Hotel, Chester le Street, DH3 4NX
Approximately 85% of the matter content of the Universe is in the form of Dark Matter. Unlike ordinary matter -- composed of particles from the Standard Model of particle physics – the existence of dark matter has only been inferred from its gravitational effects.
Connecting Direct Dark Matter Detection Experiments to Cosmologically Motivated Halo Models
Yao-Yuan Mao, Louis E. Strigari, Risa H. Wechsler ( KIPAC/Stanford)
Approximately 85% of the matter content of the Universe is in the form of Dark Matter. Unlike ordinary matter -- composed of particles from the Standard Model of particle physics – the existence of dark matter has only been inferred from its gravitational effects.
On March 21st the ESA Planck satellite cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and lensing potential power spectra measurements are publicly available. Planck measurements at multipoles l > 40 perfectly agree with the so-called LambdaCDM scenario (a flat universe with a cosmological constant as the dark energy component, with a power law of adiabatic primordial perturbations).
