We are organizing an online seminar series intended to promote scientific interaction with Ukrainian scientists during wartime and to lay the foundation for future scientific collaborations and exchange visits. The seminar series will highlight the latest developments in fundamental physics, spanning particle physics to gravity and cosmology, and the evolution of our Universe on both the smallest and largest scales.
The seminar organizers condemn the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine in the strongest possible terms. We call on all civilized countries, and the scientific community in particular, to show their solidarity with Ukraine and their support for the Ukrainian people.
We would like to invite you to take part in the upcoming 4th Seminar.
Time: Thursday, November 23, 2023, at 4pm CET (3pm GMT, 5pm EET, 10am EST)
Speaker:Prof. Dr. Kai Schmitz (University of Münster, Münster, Germany), a member of NANOGrav Collaboration
Title: Probing New Physics at the Pulsar Timing Array Frontier
Abstract: Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations around the globe recently announced compelling evidence for low-frequency gravitational waves permeating our entire Universe, that is, a gravitational-wave background (GWB) reaching us from all directions and at all times. This breakthrough achievement has important implications for astrophysics, as the GWB signal, if genuine, is likely to originate from a cosmic population of supermassive black holes orbiting each other at the centers of galaxies. As I will illustrate in this talk, the new PTA data is, however, also of great interest to the high-energy physics community, as it allows us to probe a broad range of particle physics models of the early Universe that predict the generation of a cosmological GWB in the Big Bang. In this sense, the PTA data opens a new window onto the very early Universe and enables particle physicists to constrain scenarios of new physics beyond the Standard Model at extremely high energies. In my talk, I will give an overview of these searches for new physics at the PTA frontier and highlight several cosmological scenarios that underline the relevance of PTA observations for fundamental problems such as dark matter, neutrino masses, and the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. Finally, I will conclude with a brief outlook on future measurements that may help in discriminating between a GWB signal of astrophysical origin and a GWB signal from the Big Bang.
Zoom link:
https://knu-ua.zoom.us/j/84583966061?pwd=OW1RUmZicS9yaE02MEN2ZnN5UllBdz09
Meeting ID: 845 8396 6061
Passcode: usfp2023
————
If you would like to receive regular e-mail announcements of the seminar, please, contact us via email.
