The Astro/Particle Journal Group (APJG) is an informal study group/journal club for Lafayette students who are interested in learning more about dark-matter physics, and about astrophysics/particle physics in general. The group meets roughly once every two weeks during the academic year and discuss a recent paper on one of these topics with the aid of the summaries/digests provided by the Astrobites and Particlebites websites — a pair of websites designed to make the scientific literature in these fields more accessible to undergraduate students in the physical sciences who are interested in active research. At each meeting, one member of the group leads the discussion.
Links
- Astrobites: Digests of recent articles in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology.
- Particlebites: Digests of recent articles in experimental and theoretical particle physics.
- arXiv: A server which provides open access to preprint versions of scholarly papers in physics, astronomy, and many other fields.
Meeting Schedule for Spring 2019
The scheduling of APJG meetings this semester will take place during our first meeting of the semester (time TBA). An email will be sent out to anyone on the the APJG mailing list within the first two weeks of the semester. If you are not already on that meeting list and are interested in being added, please email me at thomasbd@lafayette.edu.
Articles Covered in Past APJG Meetings
Fall 2018
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Paper: “Probing the Nature of Dark Matter Particles with Stellar Streams” by N. Banik, G. Bertone, J. Bovy, and N. Bozorgnia
Digest (Astrobites): “Stellar Streams and The Nature of Dark Matter.”
Discussion leader: Abhiram Sripat -
Paper: “Structure Formation with Generalized Dark Matter” by W. Hu
Digest (Astrobites): “Yoga for Dark Matter: Making the Cold Dark Matter Model More Flexible”
Discussion leader: Tara Leininger -
Paper: “An Absorption Profile Centered at 78 Megahertz in the Sky-Averaged Spectrum” by J. Bowman, A. Rogers, R. Monsalve, T. Mozdzen, and N. Mahesh
Digest (Astrobites): “First Detection of the 21cm Cosmic Dawn Signal”
Discussion leader: Namrata Joshi -
Paper: “Implications of CP-violating Top-Higgs Couplings at LHC and Higgs Factories” by A. Kobakhidze, N. Liu, L. Wu, and J. Yue
Digest (Particlebites): “Studying the Higgs via Top Quark Couplings”
Discussion leader: Bobby Luo -
Paper: “Higgs Cosmology and Dark Matter” by I. Moss and R. Gregory
Digest (Astrobites): “Black Holes as Teabags in the Cosmic Cup”
Discussion leader: Dominic Zhang -
Paper: “Higgs Cosmology and Dark Matter” by I. Moss and R. Gregory
Digest (Self-Produced): “Black Holes as Teabags in the Cosmic Cup”
Discussion leader: Dominic Zhang -
Paper: “Searching for Dark Matter with Paleo-Detectors” by S. Baum, A. K. Drukier, K. Freese, M. Gorski, and P. Stengel
Digest (Astrobites): “A Paleo-Detector for Dark Matter: How Ancient Rocks Could Help Unravel the Mystery”
Discussion leader: Brooks Thomas
Spring 2018
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Paper: “Possible Photometric Signatures of Moderately Advanced Civilizations: The Clarke Exobelt” by Hector Socas-Navarro
Digest: “Can We Detect Alien Civilizations from Their Space Junk?”
Discussion leader: Madhav Bista -
Paper: “New Detectors to Explore the Lifetime Frontier” by J. P. Chou, D. Curtin, and H. Lubatti
Digest (Self-Produced): “Enlarging LHC Detectors to Discover Long-Lived Particles”
Discussion leader: Brooks Thomas -
Paper: “New limits on Early Dark Energy from the South Pole Telescope” by C. Reichardt, R. de Putter, O. Zahn, and Z. Hou
Digest (Astrobites): “Dark Energy in the Early Universe”
Discussion leader: Abhiram Sripat -
Paper: “Event Horizon Telescope Observations as Probes for Quantum Structure of Astrophysical Black Holes” by S. Giddings and D. Psaltis
Digest (Astrobites): “Hunting for New Physics in a Black Hole’s Shadow”
Discussion leader: Bobby Luo
Fall 2017
- Paper: “Black Hole Kicks as New Gravitational Wave Observables” by D. Gerosa and C. Moore
Digest (Particlebites): “Can we Measure Black Hole Kicks Using Gravitational Waves?”
Discussion leader: Holdyn Barder -
Paper: “Resolving Dark Matter Subhalos With Future Sub-GeV Gamma-Ray Telescopes” by T. Chou, D. Tanoglidis, and D. Hooper
Digest (Astrobites): “Future Gamma-ray Telescopes and the Search for Dark Matter”
Discussion leader: Ethan Garey -
Paper: “GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral” by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration
Digest: None available
Discussion leader: Madhav Bista - Paper: “Performance of algorithms that reconstruct missing transverse momentum in \(\sqrt{s} = 8\mathrm{~TeV}\) proton-proton collisions in the ATLAS detector” by the ATLAS Collaboration
Digest (Particlebites): “What Happens When Energy Goes Missing?”
Discussion leader: Zach Bartholet
Spring 2017
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Paper: “Beauty-full Tetraquarks” by Y. Bai, S. Lu, and J. Osborne
Digest (Particlebites): “Beauty-full Exotic Bound States at the LHC”
Discussion Leader: Abhiram Sripat -
Paper: “Masses of the Planetary-Nebula Central Stars in the Galactic Globular-Cluster System from HST Imaging and Spectroscopy” by G. Jacoby et al.
Digest (Astrobites): “The Curious Case of Planetary Nebulae in Globular Clusters”
Discussion leader: Zachary Bartholet -
Paper: “Particle Physics Models for the 17 MeV Anomaly in Beryllium Nuclear Decays” by J. Feng, B. Fornal, I. Galon, S. Gardner, J. Smolinsky, T. Tait, and P. Tanedo
Digest (Particlebites): “The Delirium over Beryllium”
Discussion leader: Madhav Bista -
Paper: “A High Stellar Velocity Dispersion and \(\sim 100\) Globular Clusters for the Ultra Diffuse Galaxy Dragonfly 44″ by J. Feng, B. Fornal, I. Galon, S. Gardner, J. Smolinsky, T. Tait, and P. Tanedo
Digest (Particlebites): “Dragonfly 44: A Potential Dark Matter Galaxy”
Discussion leader: Ethan Garvey