Research Seminars @ Illinois

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Tailored for undergraduate researchers, this calendar is a curated list of research seminars at the University of Illinois. Explore the diverse world of research and expand your knowledge through engaging sessions designed to inspire and enlighten.

To have your events added or removed from this calendar, please contact OUR at ugresearch@illinois.edu

High Energy Physics Seminar - Tanner Trickle, Tabletop to Telescope: Unraveling the Mystery of Dark Matter

Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor: Physics Department
Location: 464 Loomis
Date: Feb 14, 2025 11:00 am
Speaker: Tanner Trickle (Fermilab, Batavia, IL)
Contact: Brandy Koebbe
E-Mail: bkoebbe@illinois.edu
Views: 31
Originating Calendar: Physics - High Energy Physics Seminar; Recent years have seen a dramatic expansion in ideas to search for dark matter beyond the weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) paradigm. In this talk we'll discuss a diverse range of new approaches, starting with small-scale, tabletop experiments. These experiments target dark matter particles far lighter than WIMPs using innovative ideas from condensed matter physics and quantum sensing. New calculations have transformed our understanding of how dark matter can interact with electrons and are essential for current experimental efforts. Additionally, we'll explore how collective excitations, e.g., phonons and magnons, will revolutionize the way we search for dark matter. Complementing these tabletop experiments, pulsar timing arrays are exceptionally sensitive to new physics on galactic scales. While their primary purpose is to detect stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds, we'll show how their extraordinary precision can be leveraged to hunt for both the lightest, and heaviest, dark matter candidates.

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