3rd General Meeting of COST Action COSMIC WISPers (CA21106)

9 Sept 2025, 08:15 → 12 Sept 2025, 23:20 Europe/Rome

Sofia University Main Building (Sofia, Bulgaria)

Venelin Kozhuharov (Univerity of Sofia "St. Kl. Ohridski" & LNF-INFN), Alessandro Mirizzi (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Axions and other very weakly interacting slim (m < GeV) particles (WISPs) are easily accommodated in several extensions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Searches for WISPs are strongly motivated by our attempts to understand the nature of the dark matter and puzzling astrophysical and particle physics observations. 

 The aim of the COST Action COSMIC WISPers (CA21106) is to coordinate and support WISPs searches in a synergic way at the boundary between particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. 

The CA21106 3rd General Meeting will be held in Bulgaria. The objective of  the meeting is to review the status of the activities performed by the different Working Groups and to discuss the further directions of investigations. 

The Management Committee Meeting will take place in the afternoon of Friday 12th September.

 

Tuesday 9 September

08:15 → 09:00 Registration

09:00 → 09:20 Welcome to CA21106 General Meeting

09:20 → 10:40 WG1 (Theory)

09:20 TBA

Speaker: Andreas Ringwald (DESY)

10:00 Open string axiverse

Speaker: Giovanni Villadoro

10:40 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 13:00 WG1 (Theory)

11:00 Testing interactions in a scalar dark sector

Speaker: Elsa Teixeira

11:40 The Thorium-229 revolution: nuclear clocks as quintessometers

Speaker: Cedric Delaunay (LAPTh)

12:20 Axion Quality: Challenges and Pathways to Improvement

Speaker: Federico Mescia

14:30 → 15:30 Round Table

15:30 → 16:30 WG1 (Theory)

15:30 Topological Portals to the Dark Sector

Speaker: Nudzeim Selimovic (INFN Padova)

16:00 Cosmic superstrings in large volume compactifications

Speaker: Gonzalo Villa (DAMTP - University of Cambridge)

15:30 → 16:30 WG2 (Dark matter & Cosmology)

15:30 Scalar Fields with Quadratic Couplings to Matter around Cavitie

Speaker: Angus Macdonald (University of Nottingham)

15:50 TBA

Speaker: Alessandro Lenoci (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

16:10 Constraining ALPs with Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Birefringence

Speaker: Matteo Galaverni (Vatican Observatory & INAF/OAS Bologna)

16:30 → 16:50 Coffee Break

16:50 → 18:10 WG1 (Theory)

16:50 Growth of cosmic strings with field-dependent tension

Speaker: Luca Brunelli (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

17:20 Cosmic strings and domain walls of the QCD quark condensate with and without a hidden axion

Speaker: Anja Stuhlfauth (Max Planck Institute for Physics)

16:50 → 18:10 WG2 (Dark matter & Cosmology)

16:50 TBA

Speaker: María Benito (Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu)

17:10 Dark matter production from axion portal

Speaker: Tommaso Sassi (INFN Sezione di Firenze, Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Wednesday 10 September

09:30 → 10:50 WG3 (Astrophysics)

09:30 X-ray observations and their applications to the physics of axions (or other WISPs)

Speaker: Jaime Ruz

10:10 Axion superradiance

Speaker: Francesca Chadha-Day (IPPP, Durham University)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee break

11:20 → 12:40 WG3 (Astrophysics)

11:20 Radio observations and their applications to the physics of axions (or other WISPs)

Speaker: Marco Regis (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

12:00 Theoretical progress on SN axions.

Speaker: Konstantin Springmann (TU Munich)

14:30 → 15:30 Round Table

15:30 → 16:30 WG3 (Astrophysics)

15:30 X-ray Searches for Axions: The M82 and Betelgeuse Case Studies

Speaker: Francisco Candon

15:50 Probing axion-like particles with multimessenger observations of neutron star mergers

Speaker: Francesca Lecce

16:10 Axion production and conversion in astrophysical transients

Speaker: Ángel Gil Muyor

15:30 → 16:30 WG4 (Experiments)

15:30 ARCHIMEDES experiment

Speaker: Domenico D’Urso

15:50 Recent Developments in Axion Detection with MADMAX

Speaker: Anton Ivanov

16:30 → 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 → 18:20 WG3 (Astrophysics)

17:00 Relaxing supernova constraints: how nucleophobic axions survive finite-density corrections.

Speaker: Vincenzo Fiorentino

17:20 Sensitivity of CTAO to axion-like particles from blazars: a machine learning approach

Speaker: Francesco Schiavone

17:40 Probing axion-like particles with very-high-energy gamma rays: Insights from MAGIC and LST-1

Speaker: Ivana Batkovic

18:00 Probing Ultralight Scalars through Compact Stars and Precision Tests of Gravity

Speaker: Tanmoy Poddar

17:00 → 18:20 WG4 (Experiments)

17:00 Precision test of fundamental physics with matter wave interferometers

Speaker: Nicola Poli (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

17:20 Hunting for Dark Matter using Levitated Superconductors

Speaker: Gerard Higgins

Thursday 11 September

09:30 → 10:50 WG2 (Dark matter & Cosmology)

09:30 New Opportunities for Ultralight DM Search with Stochastic Fluctuations

Speaker: Hyungjin Kim

10:10 Cosmological tests of the nature of dark matter

Speaker: Keir Rogers

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee break

11:20 → 12:40 WG2 (Dark matter & Cosmology)

11:20 Cracks in the Standard Cosmological Model: Anomalies, Tensions, and Hints of New Physics

Speaker: Eleonora Di Valentino (University of Sheffield)

12:00 Astrophysics of ultralight dark matter/gravitational lensing

Speaker: Kfir Blum

14:30 → 15:30 Round Table

15:30 → 16:30 Technology Forum

15:30 Advances in optomechanics

Speaker: Nenad Kralj

16:00 Satellites & Space Missions

16:30 → 17:00 Coffee break

18:00 → 19:00 WG5 (Dissemination and Outreach): Public talk

Friday 12 September

09:00 → 10:20 WG4 (Experiments)

09:00 Preliminary ALPs sensitivity projections for the RES-NOVA Observatory

Speaker: Nahuel Ferreiro Iachellini

09:40 Probing new physics with slow and trapped molecules

Speaker: Steven Hoekstra (University of Groningen, and Nikhef, The Netherlands)

10:20 → 10:40 Coffee break

10:40 → 12:00 WG4 (Experiments)

10:40 WISPFI experiment

Speaker: Marios Maroudas

11:20 PADME Experiment

Speaker: Venelin Kozhuharov (Univerity of Sofia "St. Kl. Ohridski" & LNF-INFN)

12:00 → 12:40 Round Table

12:40 → 13:20 Concluding talk

12:40 Axions explain the formation of supermassive black holes at cosmic dawn

Speaker: Pierre Sikivie

13:20 → 13:30 Conclusions

15:00 → 17:00 Management Committee Meeting

17:00 → 17:20 Coffee break

17:20 → 19:30 Management Committee Meeting