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High Energy Physics Seminar - Hongwan Liu - Fast and Differentiable Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Location
Room 464
Date
Feb 23, 2024   11:00 am  
Speaker
Hongwan Liu (University of Chicago)
Contact
Brandy Koebbe
E-Mail
BKOEBBE@ILLINOIS.EDU
Views
21
Originating Calendar
Physics - High Energy Physics Seminar

The process of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is a crucial test of cosmology. In this talk, I will describe a new code for predicting the primordial elemental abundance due to BBN. This code takes advantage of JAX, a machine learning framework, to enable fast and differentiable predictions of elemental abundances. This allows us to put BBN calculations on the same level of rigor and ease-of-use as cosmic microwave background analyses, taking nuclear rate uncertainties fully into account. The differentiable nature of the code will also allow the use of more sophisticated and efficient methods of parameter estimation beyond e.g. traditional MCMC techniques. 

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