Summary


1	Date	1/31/2025
2	Name	Pushpalatha Bhat
3	Affiliation	Fermilab
4	Home Page
5	Colloquium Title	Neural Networks and the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics
6	Abstract	The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton recognizes the transformational impact artificial neural networks, and machine learning more broadly, are having on science, technology, and society, and honors the foundational contributions of these Laureates to the development of artificial neural networks. After a brief overview of their seminal contributions, I discuss the applications of these methods in high energy physics, particularly in the discoveries and studies of the top quark and the Higgs boson, and comment on recent trends and future plans.
7	Host	Michael Eads
8	Date	2/28/2025
9	Name	Wen
10	Affiliation	Argonne National Laboratory
11	Home Page	https://www.anl.gov/profile/jianguo-wen
12	Colloquium Title	Playing with Carbon Bonds in Diamonds
13	Abstract	Carbon exhibits a unique ability to form diverse allotropes, including diamond and graphite. Diamond, the hardest known natural material, features a 3D sp³ covalent bond network (1.54 Å), whereas graphite consists of stacked graphene layers with intraplane sp² bonds (1.42 Å) and interplane van der Waals interactions. Understanding the graphite-to-diamond transformation and exploring novel allotropes remain critical research areas. First, I will present the synthesis of bulk hexagonal diamond via high-pressure, high-temperature treatment of single-crystal graphite. This hexagonal diamond surpasses cubic diamond in hardness and contains two distinct bond types, a dia-phite structure with both diamond and graphite bond lengths. Second, we observed the direct transformation pathway from graphite to diamonds via an intermediate metastable graphite phase. Third, I will discuss the ultrafast formation of a transient 2D dia-phite structure under femtosecond laser irradiation of twisted graphene. These findings highlight the potential to engineer new carbon allotropes by precisely tuning pressure and temperature conditions.
14	Host	Yasuo Ito
15	Date	3/28/2025
16	Name	Quentin
17	Affiliation	Buat
18	Home Page	https://phys.washington.edu/people/quentin-buat
19	Colloquium Title	PIONEER, a next-generation rare pion decay experiment
20	Abstract	The electron, the first elementary particle to be discovered, holds a unique place in science as it plays a key role in numerous physical phenomena from electricity to chemistry. Its heavier cousins, the muon and tau are at first sight simple copies of the electron: versions of the same particle in a different flavor, governed by the same interaction rules. This fundamental principle of Flavor Universality is a centerpiece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. PIONEER is a new experiment set to challenge this principle by studying the rarest decays of the charged pion. With this new apparatus, we aim to improve the rare pion decay measurements up to 15-fold over the current ones and probe the Standard Model at energy scales beyond the reach of colliders. Our experiment design benefits from past-generation experiments and employs emergent technologies in tracking and calorimetry. In this talk, I will discuss the physics case of the experiment, review its conceptual design and present the ongoing R&D effort toward building the detector for the first phase of the project.
21	Host	Graduate Student Association
22	Date	4/4/2025
23	Name	Sindhujha Kumaran
24	Affiliation	University of California Irvine
25	Home Page
26	Colloquium Title	Neutrino physics with Borexino and JUNO
27	Abstract	Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious particles in the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Liquid Scintillator (LS) experiments provide a powerful and well-established method to detect these ghostly particles. In this talk, I will first present the Borexino experiment, an LS experiment in Italy that operated from 2007-2021 and unraveled a lot of interesting things about our Sun and Earth using neutrinos, including the discovery of the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen fusion cycle in the Sun. Then, I will present the status and prospects of the JUNO experiment, a next-generation LS experiment in China, ~75 times bigger than Borexino, which will soon measure neutrinos from nuclear reactors and various other astrophysical sources. Its primary goal is to precisely measure the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations using reactor neutrinos and resolve an important open question in neutrino physics today: the neutrino mass ordering.
28	Host	Graduate Student Association
29	Date	4/11/2025
30	Name	Grace Cummings
31	Affiliation	Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
32	Home Page
33	Colloquium Title	When they go low, we go lower: using low-level detector information to extend the physics reach of collider experiments
34	Abstract	Even in the time of streaming and industrial big-data, the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider still produce data of staggering size. To combat this, low-level detector information is often removed, or reduced; however, the lowest-level detector information holds exciting phase space for both beyond the Standard Model particle searches and precision measurements. I will present the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment’s most recent search for heavy stable charged particles (HSCPs). Characterized by anomalously large ionization energy loss, HSCP searches are enabled by the inclusion of low-level information in the readout of the silicon pixels and strip trackers. Looking toward future colliders, the P5 recommendation of a Higgs Factory as the next collider demands precision detectors. To meet this challenge, we are developing high resolution homogenous crystal calorimetry through the measurement and separation of scintillation and Cherenkov light -- information that currently is lost in calorimeters like those in CMS. This talk will review the first proof-of-principle measurements collecting Cherenkov and scintillation light in homogeneous crystals preparing for the precision electromagnetic calorimeter layers of the future.
35	Host	Vishnu Zutshi
36	Date	4/18/2025
37	Name	Badih A. Assaf
38	Affiliation	Physics and Astronomy, University of Notre Dame
39	Home Page	https://physics.nd.edu/people/badih-assaf/
40	Colloquium Title	The anomalous Hall effect in α-MnTe thin films
41	Abstract	The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) is a Hall effect that arises at zero magnetic field in ferromagnets that have a spontaneous magnetization. In the simplest picture, its magnitude is proportional to the magnetization. Antiferromagnets are magnetically ordered materials with no net magnetization, so they are not expected to exhibit an AHE. For that same reason, antiferromagnets were considered useless for magnetic memory devices where the magnetization is used to store information. The recent understanding of how magnetocrystalline symmetry impacts the origin of the AHE challenges this simple picture. It raises hopes for the implementation of a special class of antiferromagnets, called altermagnets, as functional magnetic materials that can intrinsically host spin polarization. I will present our findings on the AHE measured in α-MnTe, an altermagnet [1]. In α-MnTe thin films grown molecular beam epitaxy, we measure a strong AHE despite the material having a nearly vanishing magnetization [2]. I will discuss the origin of this effect, in the context of a characterization study that we carried, to reveal the structural properties of this material [3]. [1] Smejkal et al., Phys. Rev. X 12 031042 (2022). [2] S. Bey et al. arxiv2409.04567. [3] S. Bey et al. submitted to Phys. Rev. Mater.
42	Host	Roland Winkler
43	Date	4/25/2025
44	Name	Senior Capstone
45	Affiliation	Northern Illinois University
46	Home Page
47	Colloquium Title	Student Presentations
48	Abstract	Bradley Forsell Mentor: Vishnu Zutshi Unlocking the Universe: The Path Forward in Particle Physics Connor Sexton Mentor: Roland Winkler The geometry of Quantum States
49	Host	Omar Chmaissem


1	Date	9/5/2025
2	Name	Siddharth Karkare
3	Affiliation	Arizona State University
4	Home Page	https://search.asu.edu/profile/3323914
5	Colloquium Title	TBA
6	Abstract	TBA
7	Host	Graduate Student Association
8	Date	12/5/2025
9	Name	Senior Capstone
10	Affiliation	Northern Illinois University
11	Home Page
12	Colloquium Title	Student Presentations
13	Abstract	TBA
14	Host	Omar Chmaissem