Description:

Daniel Wilbern, Postdoctoral Scholar, Velasco Group

"The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor for the CMS Phase-2 Upgrade"

The CMS experiment is one of CERN's flagship experiments, performing precise measurements of the Standard Model of Particle Physics as well as searches for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Most CMS analyses boil down to counting experiments, in which events passing certain criteria are counted and compared to event rates from simulations and/or data-driven auxiliary measurements. Luminosity is the conversion factor from event rate as measured by the detector and the physically-meaningful cross section. CMS's Beam Radiation, Instrumentation, and Luminosity (BRIL) group operates various luminometers in order to precisely measure luminosity in parallel with the main CMS detector subsystems. The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor (BCM1F) is one such luminometer, which works by counting pulses from silicon pad sensors placed near the LHC beam pipe. BCM1F will be succeeded by FBCM during the CMS Phase-2 upgrade: a new silicon pad-based luminometer with several upgrades to improve performance in the high luminoisity LHC (HL-LHC) era. BRIL's target for CMS Phase-2 era is 1% uncertainty in the offline luminoisity measurement, which will be attained by combining data from FBCM and other luminometers.

Cong Shen, PhD Student, Carrasco Group

"A Not-So-Mathy Guide to a Very Messy Early Universe"

In this talk, I'll explore how certain mathematical techniques—twist cohomology and canonical forms—can help us understand correlation functions in the very early universe. While these methods have some mathematical flavor, they’re not the kind that requires a PhD in abstract nonsense—I’ll try to make it clear what kind of game we’re playing.