Bhabha dark photon, have you any new physics?

• Elizabeth Long

The PADME experiment was designed to search for the production of a “dark photon”, a hypothetical particle which would act as a “portal” between the two worlds of the standard model particles and any dark matter particles which may exist. In 2020, however, a collaboration at the ATOMKI institute in Hungary confirmed their observation of an anomaly which made PADME consider a change to its strategy. This talk will discuss the original PADME setup, the ATOMKI anomaly, and how the study of Bhabha scattering influenced the latest PADME measurements.

Dicussion

Statistical Physics and Ecology, are they a good match?

• Pietro Valigi

We are all part of ecosystems whose behaviour has great impacts on our lives. Yet, understanding and predicting the behaviour of ecosystems is still an open challenge. For more than a century, physicists (and mathematicians) have tried to give their contribution. An ecosystem is a large collection of different interacting species displaying a complex behaviour and therefore, from my perspective as someone pretending to be a stastical physicist, it is natural to try to develop a simplified model that can help us better understanding this behaviour. But does all this make sense? I have not understood it yet but I have many doubts to share. In my talk, after briefly introducing a few physical models of ecosystems, I will focus on the generalized Lotka-Volterra model trying to discuss some of its potentials, shortcoming and doubts.

Discussion