Mitchell Institute (MIST) Events

Illuminating the Chemistry of Planet Formation with X-ray Flares

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)MIST M102

Speaker: Ilse Cleeves (University of Virginia)

The chemistry of protoplanetary disks sets the initial composition of newly formed planets and may also regulate the efficiency by which planets form. Disk chemical abundances typically evolve over timescales spanning thousands if not millions of years. Consequently, it was a surprise when ALMA observations taken over the course of a single year showed ... read more  »

• Astronomy

The Renaissance of Astrophysics: a landscape of opportunities in the era of Time Domain Multi-Messenger investigations

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Raffaella Margutti (Northwestern University)

Astronomical transients are signposts of catastrophic events in space, including the most extreme stellar deaths, stellar tidal disruptions by supermassive black holes, and mergers of compact objects. Thanks to new and improved observational facilities we can now sample the night sky with unprecedented temporal cadence and sensitivity across the electro... read more  »

• Astronomy

Tales from Old Friends: Single and Double White Dwarfs in the Gaia Era

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)Streaming Live

Speaker: Mukremin Kilic (University of Oklahoma)Host: Stephanie Ho

ESA’s Gaia mission has finally revealed the population of faint white dwarf stars in the solar neighborhood. We use this dataset to answer fundamental questions about the nature of white dwarfs, including their mass distribution, cooling physics (crystallization), and ultracool white dwarfs. We also use the same dataset to search for short period ... read more  »

• Astronomy

The Impact of Relations Between Supernova Properties and Their Host Galaxies on Measurements of The Hubble Constant and Dark Energy

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Daniel Scolnic (Duke University)Host: Jonelle Walsh

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) continue to of high importance for measuring the current expansion rate of the universe, parameterized by the Hubble Constant, and for dark energy.  For both of these measurements, relations between properties of the SNe and properties of the host galaxies have recently been brought up to reconcile the Hubble constant tensio... read more  »

• Astronomy

The Role of Galaxy Clusters in Shaping the Size Growth and Quenching of Galaxies

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Jasleen Matharu (Texas A&M University)

• Astronomy

Multi-Messenger Echoes of Supermassive Black Holes

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Jonathan Trump (University of Connecticut)Host: Jonelle Walsh

Our new era of gravitational wave astrophysics has opened an entirely new frontier for understanding black holes, from their birth in the early Universe to the supermassive monsters observed in all massive galaxies today. I will demonstrate how a new generation of industrial-scale time-domain surveys is creating a new multi-messenger view of supermassiv... read more  »

• Astronomy

The Milky Way in the Era of Large Surveys

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Jo Bovy (University of Toronto)Host: Stephanie Ho

For over a hundred years, the Milky Way has been the nexus between many fields of astrophysics, linking together investigations into the formation of planetary systems and stars to studies of galactic evolution, cosmology, and astroparticle physics. Obtaining a detailed understanding of our Galaxy’s structure, formation, and evolution is therefore cru... read more  »

• Astronomy

Higgs Boson: The Next Generation

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Andrew Brinkerhoff (Baylor University)Host: Doojin Kim

In 2018 the LHC finished its longest operations run to date, colliding 44 million billion protons at world-record energies over the course of 3 years.  The CMS and ATLAS experiments have used this data to study the interactions of the Higgs with second generation fermions.  In summer 2020, both collaborations completed their analyses of Higgs decays t... read more  »

• HEPEC

The Smallest and Faintest Galaxies: Clues to the Nature of Dark Matter and Galaxy Formation

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil (University of Chicago)Host: Jonelle Walsh

The smallest and faintest galaxies around the Milky Way are the most ancient, most metal-poor, and most dark-matter-dominated systems known. These extreme objects offer unique access to small scales where the stellar and dark matter content can be studied simultaneously and hold the promise of major breakthroughs in understanding the nature of dark mat... read more  »

• Astronomy

Mapping the Cool CGM at z≈1

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Johannes Zabl (Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon)Host: Stephanie Ho

Galaxies are believed to evolve regulated by the flows of gas from and to the surrounding circumgalactic medium (CGM). However, directly observing these circumgalactic gas flows around typical galaxies in the distant Universe remains a challenge. While the low-density gas can be studied in background quasar sight-lines, large samples of galaxy-abs... read more  »

• Astronomy

Neutrinos from Primordial Black Holes: An Unexpected Interplay

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Yuber F. Perez Gonzalez (Northwestern University and Fermilab)Host: Doojin Kim

Hawking radiation offers a unique method of neutrino production, unlike any weak interaction process. In fact, black hole evaporation depends on whether neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana, providing a different phenomenology in each case. If neutrinos are Dirac particles, the emission of the light right-handed states does not suffer from the helicity suppr... read more  »

• HEPEC

Deciphering the Kinematic Structure of the Small Magellanic Cloud in the Age of HST and Gaia

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Paul Zivick (Texas A&M University)

Our picture of the Magellanic Clouds has undergone continuous evolution over the last few decades as we have entered into a new era of astrometry. Nearly 15 years ago, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the Clouds revealed they were likely on their first infall into the Milky Way, upending conventional wisdom surrounding them. Since then, with... read more  »

• Astronomy

CEvNS in Future Reactor Neutrino Experiments

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (CDT)Streaming Live

Speaker: Ivan Martinez Soler (Northwestern University and Fermilab)Host: Doojin Kim

The recent discovery of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) has opened a new venue to study neutrino physics. Although experimentally challenging because the neutrino transfers a small amount of momentum to the nucleus, there are already several experimental proposals to measure such interaction with neutrinos from nuclear reactors. In this tal... read more  »

• HEPEC

Extreme UV Emission: Bridging Galaxy Evolution Across Cosmic Time

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)Streaming Live

Speaker: Danielle Berg (University of Texas Austin)Host: Stephanie Ho

In the last few years, our first glimpse of the spectral properties of z∼5−7 galaxies has emerged. Deep UV spectra have revealed prominent high-ionization nebular emission lines (i.e., C IV, He II, C III]) indicating that extreme radiation fields may be characteristic of reionization-era systems. While such strong high-ionization emission lines are ... read more  »

• Astronomy

Dr. Pei Goes to Washington

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)Streaming Live

Speaker: Liuyi Pei (Office of Management and Budget)Host: Jonelle Walsh

Many astronomers think the only career options for an astronomy PhD are in academia or industry, but an often overlooked third option is working in the public sector. In this talk, I will discuss what I do at the Office of Management and Budget, how I transitioned from studying AGNs to studying the budget of the National Science Foundation, and other ro... read more  »

• Astronomy

Neutrino Oscillations as Constraints on Effective Field Theory

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (CDT)Streaming Live

Speaker: Zahra Tabrizi (Virginia Tech)Host: Doojin Kim

I will talk about how to systematically study physics beyond the standard model (BSM) in the neutrino oscillation experiments within the standard model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) framework. In this way, the analysis of the data can capture large classes of models, where the new degrees of freedom have masses well above the relevant energy for the ex... read more  »

• HEPEC

Seminar (via Zoom)

11:30 am – 12:30 pm (CDT)

Speaker: Benoit Cole (Konkoly Observatory)Host: Jonelle Walsh

• Astronomy