2012: archived seminars
Extra Seminar 3:00pm Friday, 18th May
Chris Stockdale
Department of Physics, Marquette University, Wisconsin
Radio Supernovae: CSI - Circum-Stellar Investigations
Core collapse supernova events play a critical role in the chemical enrichment of our Universe and produce many of the critical elements needed for life to form on other planets. The stars that produce these events comprise less than a tenth of one percent of star in a typical galaxy and have lifetimes shorter than ten million years, making them very rare events in a galaxy like our Milky Way. To explore the evolution of these massive stars and how they play a role in forming new stars, we must look beyond our own galaxy, typically 10-100 million light years away. At these distances, it is practically impossible to predict which stars which explode until they have already done so. However, after the explosion, there is sometimes radio and X-ray emission produced as the supernova blast wave over runs the stellar winds shed by the star in the thousands of years prior to its death. I will present a summary of how astronomers at the Australian Telescope Compact Array and the Very Large Array use this radio emission to constrain and determine the pre-explosion evolution and environment of these massive supernova progenitor stars, as young as a few months and as old as seventy-five years after the supernova explosion.
Chris Stockdale is an Associate Professor in Physics from Marquette University, a Catholic, Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
He completed his PhD at the University of Oklahoma in 2001 and has been at Marquette since 2003, where he teaches physics and astronomy courses. He is in New Zealand following a visit to the Australian Astronomy Observatory (AAO) in Sydney as a Distinguished Visitor, hosted by Dr Stuart Ryder (a UC BSc (Hons) graduate in 1988).
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11:00am, Friday, 18th May
Dr William Tobin, Vannes, France
(William is in New Zealand thanks to support from the
Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa)
The 243rd anniversary of Captain Cook's observation of the transit of Venus
We tend to favour round numbers when celebrating anniversaries, but when transits of Venus are concerned, there is no anniversary like the 243rd. Why is this? Indeed, what is a transit of Venus? Why was Cook sent half-way around the world to observe the one on 3 June 1769 from Tahiti? Why did the British, French, Germans and Americans send half a dozen scientific expeditions to New Zealand to observe the 19th-century transits in 1874 and 1882? Are transits of Venus still of any scientific interest? Why, 243 years after Cook, should we look out for the final transit of this century, on June 6? And where does Léon Foucault (of pendulum fame) fit into all this?
Biography
William was an academic staff member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Canterbury for 20 years from 1987. He was involved in many astronomical activities in the Department, including a number of years as Director of Mt John University Observatory and was instrumental in the development of the use of CCD detectors for imaging and spectroscopy. He also has a passion for the historical perspective of things astronomical, including arranging celebrations to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Townsend Telescope at the Arts Centre of Christchurch.
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Special Poster Presentation – Friday 18th May
Friday, May 18, 10:30am preceding the 11:00am Seminar, outside 701
Adam Stevens, 480 Poster Presentation
Spectroscopic Effects of Differential Limb Magnification
with Rotation on Microlensed Dwarf Stars
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Extra Seminar - note: 3:00pm Thursday 17th May Room 701
Chris Blake
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
Measuring Dark Energy with the Wigglez Survey
We present new measurements of the cosmic expansion history and growth history over the last 7 billion years, using data from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey of 200,000 galaxy redshifts. We have used baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in the galaxy distribution as a standard ruler to measure the distance-redshift relation up to z=0.73, and present a BAO "Hubble diagram" which provides a powerful cross-check of the use of Type Ia supernovae as standard candles. We additionally use redshift-space distortions in the galaxy clustering pattern to determine the cosmic growth rate with 10% accuracy in redshift bins up to z=0.9. We show that a cosmological constant model of dark energy is able to simultaneously fit both the expansion and growth data. Finally, we measure Alcock-Paczynski distortions in the clustering pattern to reconstruct the expansion history in a non-parametric manner, demonstrating the reality of accelerating cosmic expansion.
Chris Blake is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing at Swinburne. He is an observational cosmologist with research interests in large-scale structure, dark energy and galaxy evolution. He has helped to develop techniques to measure the properties of dark energy using the acoustic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum as a standard ruler that he will described in his talk. Chris is in Christchurch for Peter Smale's oral examination and discussions with interested persons.
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11 May 2012
Measurement Standards Laboratory of New Zealand (MSL)
Industrial Research Limited
c.sutton@irl.cri.nz
Scientific advances, including some Nobel prize-winning physics, have exposed inadequacies in some of the unit definitions in the SI - the International System of Units. But these advances have also shown how the SI can be improved if several of the base units of the SI are re-defined in terms of fundamental constants. A plan is now in place to make this happen and research to achieve the required accuracies is being conducted world-wide. These radical changes will take us from an international unit system started in 1875 and based on material artefacts - with all their problems - to one based on quantum physics. All this will be explained in the seminar with emphasis on research to replace the current kilogram definition (in terms of an artefact) with a new definition in terms of the Planck constant. How this is possible and MSL's role in this research will also be discussed.
Biography: Chris is a scientist with the Measurement Standards Laboratory of New Zealand which is part of the Crown Research Institute IRL. He has worked for many years on advanced measurement techniques in the areas of mass, length and pressure. His current research is on a watt balance to link the kilogram to the Planck constant.
Chris Sutton’s promotion to Distinguished Scientist in 2008 recognises his considerable achievements in the field of metrology – the science of measurement. He serves on national and international committees that oversee and ensure world-wide consistency in international measurements. He was also involved in the preparation of New Zealand’s Measurement Standards Act in 1992 which led to the establishment of MSL. Read more by clicking on Chris's name above.
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Friday, 4 May 2012
Prof David Parry
Professor of Biophysics at the Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University.
Unravelling the workings of the animal body: A biophysical approach
"Physics in our Lives" presupposes our very existence as humans. What is it that actually enables us to perceive and understand the physical phenomena that surround us? To begin to answer that enormously complex question we need to understand what makes us who we are. As a starting point consider that each of us must therefore have a defined structure, as well as an ability to move and to see. We must be able to replicate if our species is to have long-term viability. We must also have a brain. For these reasons our bodies contain (amongst a host of other important biological molecules) a range of fibrous structures including DNA - the blueprint of life; hair, bone and skin proteins that define our shape and give us protection against physical insult; muscle and tendon proteins that aid our locomotion; transparent corneal connective tissue that refracts light on to our retinas, thereby enabling us to see. Thanks to a variety of physics-based experimental techniques we now understand a great deal about the structure of these molecules, their modes of aggregation and the functions
Biography: Professor David Parry David Parry has been active in research for 45 years and over that period has studied the structure and function of a variety of fibrous proteins, including those comprising connective tissues (skin, tendon, cornea), muscle (tropomyosin and myosin) and hair (keratin). Currently, he is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Biophysics and the recently retired Head of the Institute of Fundamental Sciences at Massey University. He has undertaken collaborative research all over the world and has spent significant periods in the UK (London, Oxford), Australia (Melbourne) and the USA (Boston) as well as in New Zealand. His scientific contributions have been recognized by election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the New Zealand Institute of Physics, the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics (UK). David was also the President of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) and Vice President of the International Council for Science (ICSU). In all, he has contributed more than 210 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals and has written and/or edited eight books.
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Friday 20 April, 11:00am Room 701 Rutherford Bldg
Dr Celine Cattoen
BlueFern High Performance Computing Centre
Black Hole simulations and High Performance Computing
Gravitational waves are one of the many phenomena predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity that are still to be observed. Numerical Relativity is the branch of General Relativity that studies simulations of relativistic binaries (black holes, neutron stars) and their associated gravitational waves. Since 2005, the field of Numerical Relativity has experienced many breakthroughs, with full inspiral-merger-ringdown simulations now possible. One of the main goals is to provide very accurate templates of gravitational waves for ground-based and space-based interferometers.
I will give an overview of the recent progress and the diversity of the numerical methods and strategies to solve Binary Black Hole simulations. In particular, I will also cover in a little more detail some of my work on using the Spectral Element Method (SEM) for Black Hole simulations. More precisely, a singular Schwarszchild black hole evolution is used as a test case with the "BSSN" formulation of the Einstein equations and moving punctures. The spectral element method is highly parallelizable and is ideal for running simulations on supercomputers such as the new facilities at BlueFern which will also be briefly introduced.
Bibliography: Celine completed her engineering degree in applied mathematics from the French National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA, Toulouse, France). She first came to New Zealand as an exchange student and then completed a MSci and PhD at Victoria University of Wellington with Prof Matt Visser, focusing on General Relativity and Cosmology. In 2009, she moved to Canada as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, and discovered the joys of High Performance Computing when getting access to the national Canadian supercomputing facilities (Westgrid, Compute Canada). In October last year she moved to Christchurch and joined the BlueFern team at the University of Canterbury, which is part of the New Zealand National supercomputing facilities (NeSI).
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Friday 13 April, 11:00am Room 701 Rutherford Bldg
Peter Smale , Recently submitted PhD Student in the Physics and Astronomy Dept, University of Canterbury
The expansion of the local Universe: Brooklyn is not expanding, but what about New York?
The redshifts of the spectral lines of galaxies are usually interpreted as being due to their recessional velocities -- a Doppler shift. Hubble's law states that galaxies recede from us at a rate proportional to their distance away from us. But we know that in our reference frame they are not actually moving like this -- they just appear to be moving because the space in between them and us is expanding. What is the difference? In a perfectly smooth universe, there is no difference, but we don't live in a perfectly smooth universe. In fact, we live near the edge of a wispy filament of galaxies right next to a very large void. In a study of the expansion rates in the nearby Universe in a sample of 4534 galaxy peculiar velocities (http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5371), we found considerable variation due to the local distribution of large-scale structure. This observation suggests that we must be careful to distinguish between expansion of space on the one hand, and velocities with respect to some frame on the other. This talk will address this distinction, which turns out to have some profound implications for the picture of our cosmic neighbourhood. Even if some of the theoretical issues seem a little obscure, I hope that a description of the layout of the local Universe as it appears from recent surveys might at least help to clarify the picture of our place in it.
Biography
Peter Smale first qualified as a geologist and then worked for two years as a mudlogger in Australia. He decided to do physics in 1999 with a view to becoming an academic geologist/geophysicist, but became interested in physics for its own sake. There is an overlap: many of the questions about origins and evolution addressed in geology are also addressed in cosmology, just on different scales. He recently submitted a PhD entitled "Observations and inhomogeneity in cosmology".
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Friday 30 March, 11:00am Room 701 Rutherford Bldg
Director of Medical Physics, Dept Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury
Digital Holographic Interferometry for Radiation Dosimetry
Microbeam radiotherapy (MRT) is an experimental technique for treatment of cancer with high doses of synchrotron X-rays. The spatially modulated beams can destroy tumours in animal models whilst causing little damage to normal tissues. In fact, the normal tissue tolerance to this type of irradiation is an order of magnitude higher compared to conventional radiotherapy. Experimental determination of the spatial distribution of radiation doses delivered during MRT is a major challenge that needs to be solved before the technique can be safely applied to humans.
We are in the process of developing a novel experimental approach, based on Digital Holographic Interferometry (DHI), to measure radiation absorbed dose in a medium by means of Optical Calorimetry. This is a work in progress but we hope to be able to carry out the first dosimetry measurements towards the end of this year on the Australian Synchrotron.
The talk covers the motivation for this research from a medical and radiobiological perspective, provides an overview of DHI and how it works, and the challenges that lie ahead of us.
Biography:
Juergen was enrolled in a double degree program at the University of Applied Sciences in Ulm/Germany and Coventry University/UK and graduated in 1996 with Dipl Ing (FH) in Medical Engineering and BSc(Hons) in Medical Instrumentation. After a brief spell in industry working for Siemens Medical he obtained his PhD from the School of Mathematical and Information Sciences at Coventry University in 2001. This was followed by a 2 year postdoctoral position at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA and a position as Clinical Medical Physicist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany. He was appointed to his current position as Senior Lecturer in 2006 and will return to Seattle before long.
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Friday 23 March, 11:00am Room 701 Rutherford Bldg
Dr Wolfganag Rack,
Gateway Antarctica
How much snow falls in Antarctica?
The Antarctic and the Greenland ice sheet are likely the major contributors to sea level rise over the 21st century. The overall mass budget of the Antarctic ice sheet is at present slightly negative, and there are indications for increasing mass loss. A major uncertainty in this calculation is the mass gain by snow accumulation at the surface, which might mitigate increased ice loss at the ice sheet margin in a warming world. However, the measurement of snow accumulation is still inadequate, as satellite methods measuring snow accumulation over the large area are unsatisfactory.
Work from various authors demonstrates the potential for mapping snow accumulation based on microwave (MW) sensors. I present a new approach for the measurement of snow accumulation based on the simulation and analysis of MW satellite signals. By applying the dense medium radiative transfer theory the volume scattering and absorption coefficients of snow are calculated. As model input serve empirically derived profiles of effective grain size as a function of mean surface temperature and accumulation rate. The coefficients for the critical density transition between low-density snow near the surface and very dense firn at larger depth are evaluated using a very simple approach by interpolation, which I call scatter-regime bridging.
I demonstrate the applicability of the method by comparing simulated backscattering coefficients with measured satellite data. Simulations were carried out using accumulation data measured at a 200 km long profile in Antarctica. This is work in progress, which is carried out in collaboration with the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
Biography:
Wolfgang Rack obtained his MSc (1995) and PhD (2000) at the Institute for Meteorology & Geophysics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. He was a Research Scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany from 2001 until 2006. He was then appointed to his current position at the University of Canterbury (Gateway Antarctica). Over the course of his research he has travelled to the ice nine times, primarily conducting glaciological reference measurements for the validation of satellite data.
All Welcome
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Extra Seminar - 11:00am Thursday 22 March - Room 701 Rutherford Bldg
Dr Karim Noui,
Laboratoire de Mathematiques et Physique Theorique,
Tours University, France
Loop Quantum Gravity: Foundations and applications
I will review the basis of Loop Quantum Gravity and present some of its applications. In particular, I would describe the way black holes are described in that framework and how one can recover the Bekenstein-Hawking formula.
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Friday, 16 March11:00am Rm 701Rutherford Building
Dr Loretta Dunne
Lecturer in Physics, University of Canterbury
'The Dirty Side of Galaxy Evolution'
I will talk about the hidden Universe - normally blocked from view by clouds of gas and dust within galaxies but revealed when we observe at far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths. I'll outline the progress which has been made in this field over the past decade and the new results which are coming from the Herschel Space Observatory.
Finally, I'll look ahead to how we can use Herschel and the new ASKAP telescope to study the evolution of gas in galaxies for the first time.
Biography
Loretta did her MPhys and PhD at Cardiff University, followed by a PPARC postdoctoral fellowship. She then moved to University of Nottingham for a lectureship, had a year or two out being terrified by teenagers in teacher training, then returned to Nottingham as a lecturer again in 2007. Recently arrived in the department in November.
All Welcome
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Friday, 9 March
11:00am Rm 701 Rutherford Building
Post-doc Fellow with ICECUBE, Physics and Astronomy Department
Gamma-ray astronomy at the University of Canterbury
The field of astroparticle physics aims to understand the high energy processes in our Universe through the use of neutrino, gamma-ray and cosmic ray observatories. Each of these observing techniques give us a unique view of the Universe and when deployed in a Multi-Messenger approach, allow us to probe objects and physical processes we would have otherwise been blind to. Through the IceCube Collaboration, the University of Canterbury has a strong on-going contribution to our understanding of the neutrino Universe. However the University's contribution to the field of astroparticle physics now includes gamma-ray astronomy thanks to our work with observations with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. In this talk I will review and discuss this on-going work with Fermi, and how it fits into our understanding of Active Galactic Nuclei.
Biography: Anthony completed his MSci at the University of St Andrews in 2003, and subsequently completed his PhD in high energy astrophysics at the University of Durham in 2006. After post-docs in neutrino astrophysics at Sheffield and Marseille, Anthony moved to Christchurch in 2010 as a Post-doctoral Fellow with the IceCube collaboration. In parallel to his work in neutrino astrophysics with IceCube, Anthony has also started a gamma-ray research group, utilising data from the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope.
All Welcome
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Special Seminar
6 March, Tuesday 4pm, Rm 701, Rutherford Building
Richard Taylor
Professor of Physics, Psychology and Art, Director of the Materials Science Institute,
University of Oregon (rpt@uoregon.edu)
Fractal vision: using retinal implants to restore vision to the blind
Technological advances over the past few decades have transformed the concept of bionic eyes from the wild speculations of science fiction into the practicalities of science fact. For one thing, the number of sensors that capture light in digital cameras is fast approaching the 127 megapixels of the human eye. Furthermore, surgeons can now insert electronic chips into the retina. With over one million people diagnosed with retinal diseases each year, the grand hope is to restore vision by replacing damaged rods and cones with artificial photoreceptors. Clinical trials are already under way using retinal implants based on camera chip technology. However, there are crucial differences between how the human visual system and the camera “see”. These differences arise because, while the camera uses the Euclidean shapes favoured by engineers, the eye exploits the fractal geometry that is ubiquitous throughout nature. In this talk, I will discuss the advantages predicted for fractal-based implants. These include an increase in visual acuity by over an order of magnitude, potentially allowing people to read text and facial expressions – essential capabilities for performing everyday tasks. Furthermore, unlike current designs, fractal implants will trigger the physiological mechanism used by the human visual system to prevent our stress-levels from soaring. This latter effect holds crucial implications for society: the U.S. spends over $300 billion annually on stress-induced illnesses, and stress is increasingly blamed for precipitating debilitating disorders such as schizophrenia and cancer.
Biography: Richard Taylor is a Professor of Physics, Psychology and Art. Since gaining his Physics Ph.D. in 1988 (Nottingham University, UK), he has published over 250 research papers and has worked in the USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, he trained as a painter at the Manchester School of Art (U.K., 1995), and has a Masters Degree in Art Theory (The University of New South Wales, Australia, 2000). Taylor has studied nature’s patterns in a diverse range of research fields, including psychology, physiology, physics, geography, architecture and art, cumulating in his D.Sc. award in 2004. Taylor uses his interests in nature’s patterns to encourage collaborations between science and art and to promote public awareness of science. As an example, his work has been the subject of television documentaries, including The Art of Science (ABC, 1998), Hunting the Hidden Dimension (PBS, 2008) and The Code (BBC TV, 2011). His work has also been the subject of popular press articles (for example, in The New York Times and The London Times), magazine articles (for example, in Scientific American, Time, The New Yorker, New Scientist and Discover) and ten popular science books. He regularly gives lectures around the world, commissioned by organizations as diverse as the Nobel Foundation, the Royal Society and national art galleries such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in Venice.
All Welcome
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Friday, 2nd March 11:00am Rm 701Rutherford Building
Dr Judy Mohr
Centre for Bioengineering
University of Otago (Christchurch)
From the Stars to MARS
After completing my PhD in 2009 I was faced with that age old question that so many of us are forced to ask ourselves at some point in our lives: “Now what?” With a varied career, starting in engineering and manufacturing automation, through to optical turbulence detection using stellar light, one thing became rapidly apparent; the skills we learn during our post-graduate studies can be applied to any application.
In this talk, I'll take a brief walk down memory lane, showing all that although the applications may vary greatly, the skills required are all the same. I'll also give an overview of the MARS research project and some of the latest to come out from various personnel on the team.
Biography: Judy completed a ME(Mechanical) at the University of Auckland in 1999 and move to Christchurch with her husband in 2000. She completed her PhD at University of Canterbury in 2009, and is now a post-doctoral research fellow with the Centre for Bioengineering at the University of Otago (Christchurch) where she plays an active role in the MARS research group.
All Welcome
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Friday 24 February
Dr John Campbell
Physics & Astronomy Department
Rutherford's Path to the Nuclear Atom
Last year was the centennial of Rutherford's nuclear atom, one of his three fundamental discoveries and the one for which he has most international fame. This major event surprisingly formed no part of the International Year of Chemistry. John will talk about Rutherford's intriguing path to this discovery, and how the path started in New Zealand. It is a story worthy of telling students everywhere.
Biography
John Campbell is a retired physicist from the University of Canterbury. He is the author of "Rutherford Scientist Supreme" and http://www.rutherford.org.nz/, and the producer of the documentary "Rutherford". John initiated and runs the Ask-A-Scientist programme which has seen some 90,000 column cms of science in New Zealand newspapers and has organised some 50 firewalks throughout New Zealand plus three in the USA, which probably makes him certifiable.
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Friday 17 February 11:00am Rm 701
Dr Richard Brown
Bluefern High Performance Computing Centre, Biomathematics
Blood flow in the brain
As humans, we need a semi-regular supply of food to function on a day-to-day basis. Missing an occasional meal does not have any particularly adverse effects. Our organs, however, are much more particular about how often they get fed, and none is more so than the brain. For example, muscular tissue in the legs can forego blood and its consequential flowing nutrients for up to an hour before succumbing to at least some dysfunction; but the brain can last a few minutes at most before cells die. For this reason, the brain has a number of mechanisms, mostly not well-understood, that ensure a sufficient and continuous supply of nutrients in the face of changing demand and physiological conditions. Our research project is to develop a large-scale computational model of cerebral bloodflow which allows for the investigation of these mechanisms.
To simulate the behaviour of the brain, we need to have a model that incorporates a variety of spatial scales, from the macroscopic behaviour of blood flow in the arteries, governed by the equations of fluid dynamics, down to the microscopic biochemical interactions that allow surrounding cells to contract or dilate small individual arteries to regulate the flow. This multiscale nature of the problem gives rise to a slew of computational and mathematical challenges.
In this talk, I’ll give a survey of the project as a whole, and then cover in a little more detail some of my current work developing reduced order approximations to the large-scale dynamical systems that result from a model of blood flow regulation on a large vascular tree.
Biographical details
Dr Brown is a recently appointed postdoctoral fellow in the Bluefern High Performance Computing Centre, and before that was working in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. His research interests are mathematical biology, scientific computing, and numerical linear algebra.
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Mon, 13 February 3:00pm Extra Seminar
Kunihito Uzawa
Kinki University, Japan,
Visiting with Ishwaree Neupane and the Theoretical Group.
Dynamical brane solutions in higher-dimensional gravitational theory
We present dynamical brane solutions in higher-dimensional gravitational theory coupled to dilaton and several forms. We apply these solutions to cosmology and black holes. We find the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmological solutions with power-law expansion. We discuss the dynamics of branes based on these solutions. If we regard the bulk space as our universe, we may interpret them as black holes in the expanding universe. We also discuss lower-dimensional effective theories and point out naive effective theories may give us some solutions which are inconsistent with the higher-dimensional Einstein equations.
References:
[1] Kei-ichi Maeda, Kunihito Uzawa, arXiv:1201.3213 [hep-th]
[2] Kei-ichi Maeda, Masato Minamitsuji, Nobuyoshi Ohta, Kunihito Uzawa,
arXiv:1006.2306 [hep-th]
[3] Kei-ichi Maeda, Nobuyoshi Ohta, Kunihito Uzawa, arXiv:0903.5483 [hep-th]
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Friday 10 February 11:00am Rm 701
Dr Scott Joonkoo Choi
PhD, Canterbury University
From nanotechnology to the meat industry:
a story of a physics graduate
I completed a PhD in laser spectroscopy in 2009. My training focused on gaining a good understanding of nanocrystals doped with europium ions using laser spectroscopy. However, on completing my PhD, I found myself exciting spare ribs instead of nanocrystals with an ultra-short-pulsed laser in the very room in which I had routinely worked over many years. A short time later, I even found myself trying to build a device which detects bacteria emission on the surfaces of spare ribs.
In this talk I would like to share my experience of industries thirst for advanced technologies and how a physics graduate can be useful in answering that demand.
Biography
Scott came to NZ from Korea in 1993 to study at Canterbury University majoring in physics and obtaining a
BSc in 2000, MSc in 2004 and Phd in 2009. He then worked for Anzco in a proof of concept project from 2009 to 2010 and is currently in the physics department as a research associate.
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Friday 3 February, 11:00am Rm 701
Dr. Robert Jedicke
PhD Toronto, Manager Pan-STARRS,
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
Dr Jedicke is visiting in the Department with Jack Baggaley.
Earth's mini-moons
Everyone knows that the Earth has one natural satellite - the Moon.
But they are wrong. We show that the Earth has many small natural satellites captured from the near-Earth object population of asteroids and comets and that at any time there is another natural object as big as one-meter diameter in orbit around the Earth in addition to the Moon.
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(Special Seminar)
11:00a.m. Tuesday, 24 January, Rm 701
The first seminar for the year will be a special one on Tuesday given by Shaun Hotchkiss, from Helsinki University who will be visiting David Wiltshire and Chris Gordon.
Is the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect from super-structures still a problem for LambdaCDM?
Abstract: In any region of the universe where the gravitational potential decays over time large-scale structure will produce a redshift in the cosmic microwave background. This is known as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. A cosmological constant causes such a decay and as such the ISW effect is an important consistency test of the standard cosmological model. The ISW imprint of very large (super) structures has reportedly been detected with >4-sigma significance. I will discuss this observation and the LambdaCDM prediction for it. It is seen that the observed signal is >3-sigma larger than expectations. No solution to this ‘ISW mystery’ is yet known; however I will discuss some interesting directions worth further exploration.