Second Rome Physics Encounters @LNF

Thursday 28 Nov 2019, 11:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Salvini

This informal meeting is the second of the Rome physics encounter series. It aims at bringing together young speakers working or collaborating with the research groups in the Rome area.

In the spirit of workshops and conferences at LNF, talks will be presented in a pedagogical way and plenty of time is scheduled to allow discussions among participants. The encounters will be synchronised with a selected LNF General Seminar, held in the afternoon at 2.30pm.

The lunch is offered to all registered participant at the LNF canteen.

Young scientists series: Rome Physics Encounters

1 Sub-GeV Dark Matter in Superfluid He-4: an Effective Theory Approach

One of the most urgent problems in physics is understanding the nature of Dark Matter: finding the Dark Matter in the form of a particle would open a brand new branch of physics beyond the Sandard Model. Many experiments until now have excluded a large spectrum of values for the WIMP exclusion plot, hence it may be relevant to consider a Dark Matter with lower mass. In a scattering based detection very soft recoils would be expected, hence sub-GeV Dark Matter particles require original detection methods, as scatterings in superfluid He-4 targets may be. The gapless excitations produced by superfluid helium would be the object of detection. Since it is still not possible to analytically deduce the superfluid He dispersion curve, an EFT is given for the phonons description, which is found to be in agreement with experimental results. Further, we build a model describing the DM and its mediator and the way this mediator interacts with He. Having a full description of the dynamics of the system, decay rates and exclusion plots are built, placing this work in a favourable position in the current Dark Matter detection panorama

Speaker: Francesca Acanfora (Roma Tre) (Roma 3)

2 Post-inflationary Production of Light Dark Sectors

Light dark sector particles, especially bosons if coupled to the inflaton can be copiously produced during (p)reheating epoch courtesy to Bose enhancement. In many particle physics scenarios such particles are often invoked to resolve tensions with cosmological bounds from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS). We will discuss two specific cases - one involving bosonic mediators with light sterile neutrinos invoked in context to several neutrino experimental anomalies and one in context to non-thermal production of dark matter. We will discuss the post-inflationary particle production in a large field inflationary model and highlight the region of the parameter space viable with early universe cosmology.

Speaker: Anish Ghoshal (Roma Tre) (Roma 3)

LNF_v5.pdf

3 Axion-Like particle as Light Dark Matter Portal

Today high precision accelerators represent a new frontier of detection for investigate on light dark sector. In particular I will illustrate why the axion-like particle can be a good Portal candidate as well as, by showing some phenomenological analysis, how PADME experiment, a fixed-target experiment in Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, is able to test it.

Speaker: Dr Frederica Giacchino (LNF) (INFN - LNF)

Seminar LNF 28 November.pdf

13:15 Lunch

General LNF Seminar

4 Quantum Optical Control of Levitated Solids: a novel probe for the gravity-quantum interface

The increasing level of control over motional quantum states of massive, solid-state mechanical devices opens the door to an hitherto unexplored parameter regime of macroscopic quantum physics. I will report on our recent progress towards controlling levitated solids in the quantum regime. I will discuss the prospects of using these systems for fundamental tests of physics, including the interface between quantum and gravitational physics.

Speaker: Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer (Vienna Univ.) (Vienna Univ.)

LNF_General_Seminar_Frascati_November_28_2019_Aspelmeyer_pdf.pdf