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Time (AEDT) | Topic / talk title | Presenter / details | Abstract | File | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
7:00-9:00 | Breakfast (for those staying the night before) | ||||
8:30-9:00 | 30 | Registration (for those not registered on previous days) Arrival Tea & Coffee | Illawarra Gallery | ||
9:00-9:30 | 30 | Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country | The Deck | Local Traditional Owners and Elders will perform a smoking ceremony on the deck and a Welcome to Country | |
9:30-9:45 | 15 | Welcome from Director and housekeeping | Elisabetta Barberio / Anita Vecchies | ||
Session 1 | Session Chair - | ||||
9:45-10:15 | 30 | Keynote presentation - Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter | James Dent | ||
10:15-10:30 | 15 | A tale of two experiments and the not-so-straight journey of scientific endeavour | Laura Manenti | “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Dickens’ words well describe the reality of experimental physics, where success and failure often go hand in hand. In this talk, I will take you through the development and characterisation of one of the world's quietest sensors: a superconducting transition-edge sensor designed for a future dark matter experiment searching for dark photons. I will tell you about the path that led to the final experiment and its outcome, sharing the challenges encountered along the way and the behind-the-scenes moments not shared in the final published paper. Through this tale, I will show that in experimental physics, the norm is that things do not unfold as planned. Yet, it is precisely this unpredictability that makes the journey so exciting. | |
10:30-11:00 | 30 min | Morning Tea | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 2 | Session Chair - | ||||
11:00-11:30 | 30 | Keynote presentation - Dark Matter Direct Detection | Luca Scotto Lavina | ||
11:30-11:45 | 15 | Dark Sector Searches at Belle/Belle II Experiment | Eiasha Waheed | The Belle and Belle II experiments are crucial for exploring the dark sector by searching for axion-like particles (ALPs) and heavy neutrinos, which may extend beyond the Standard Model. These searches focus on ALPs as potential dark matter candidates and study their decays, while also probing heavy neutrinos in B meson decays. With unprecedented sensitivity, Belle II pushes the boundaries on current dark matter and new physics searches, setting stringent limits on ALP couplings and neutrino properties. | |
11:45-12:00 | 15 | SUPL and future opportunities | Sue Barrell | ||
12:00-13:00 | 60 min | Lunch | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 3 | Session Chair - | ||||
13:00-15:00 | 120 | EDI session - Collaborative Cultural Immersion | Speaking in Colour - will also serve as an opportunity to network and socialise whilst doing the activity | ||
15:00-15:30 | 30 min | Afternoon Tea | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 4 | Session Chair - | ||||
15:30-15:45 | 15 | Galaxy clusters: giant dark matter particle colliders | Ellen Sirks | Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the Universe. Because of their high density and local velocity dispersion, they are ideal environments for probing the nature of dark matter. The specific properties of dark matter can have great effects on both clusters as a whole as well as on the galaxies residing in them. In this seminar I will present my work studying some of the effects of self-interacting dark matter on simulated galaxy clusters. In addition, I will discuss how I will be studying these effects observationally using the balloon-borne SuperBIT telescope. | |
15:45-16:00 | 15 | Development of Mass Spectrometry Techniques for Low Background Experiments | Dominik Koll | Mass spectrometry is the method of choice to determine radionuclide concentrations in detector materials for low background experiments if decay counting is not applicable. In this presentation, recent work to develop and optimise mass spectrometric techniques for the determination of radionuclides such as 40K, 129I, 210Pb or actindes will be discussed with focus on the future capabilities of the new Helmholtz Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Tracing Environmental Radionuclides (HAMSTER) facility. | |
16:00-16:15 | 15 | Mental well-being in gravitational wave and high energy physics | Kamiel Janssens | Many people in academia struggle with their mental well-being due to the unique environment and conditions. However, at the same time many researchers love their fulfilling job. In a recent set of survey(s) we probed the general mental well-being of researchers in the field of gravitational waves (2021) and the wider High Energy/Astrophysics community (2022). We start by highlighting some of the key conclusions of these surveys. Is there any difference between the subsequent years? How resilient is the mental well-being of our collaborators? Tune in to learn about these and many other related topics! | |
16:15-16:30 | 15 | Near-quantum limited axion dark matter search with the ORGAN experiment around 26 micro-eV | Graeme Flower | The latest iteration of the ORGAN experiment operated at millikelvin temperatures using a flux-driven Josephson parametric amplifier (JPA) for reduced noise, along with various other upgrades over previous iterations. Covering the 25.45−26.27 micro-eV mass range, this near-quantum limited phase of ORGAN employs a conducting rod resonator and a 7-T solenoidal magnet to place the most sensitive exclusion limits on axion-photon coupling in the range to date. | |
16:30-16:35 | 5 | Stretch break | |||
16:35-17:10 | 35 | Student pitch / 3 min speed talks | TBC | ||
17:10-1830 | 80 min | Poster Session | The Deck Full details here: https://darkmatteraustralia.atlassian.net/wiki/x/DAbMaw | Any student/postdoc who is not doing a talk should present a poster. We are also inviting recipients of CDM SI funding to present an update of their projects as a poster. Vote for your favourite poster here: https://forms.office.com/r/WmWx8wLVwE | |
18:00-19:00 | 60 | Closed session - CDM Chief Investigators | Pacific 1 |
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Thursday 21st November
Time (AEDT) | Topic / talk title | Presenter / Details | Abstract | File | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
7:00-9:00 | Breakfast (for those staying the night before) | ||||
8:30-9:00am | 30 | Registration (for those not registered on previous days) | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 1 | Session Chair - | ||||
9:00-9:30 | 30 | Keynote presentation - Indirect Dark Matter Detection | Aaron Vincent | ||
9:30-10:45 | 75 | CDM Research Theme Updates | Theme leaders (or delegates) | ||
10:45-11:00 | 15 | Group photo | Assemble at the bottom of the stairs to the North Bar |
| |
11:00-11:30 | 30 min | Morning Tea | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 2 | Session Chair - | ||||
11:30-12:30 | 60 | Panel discussion | The future of dark matter research with a focus on quantum and astro | ||
12:30-13:00 | 30 | Education and Outreach Update | Jackie Bondell Victoria Millar | ||
13:00-14:00 | 60 min | Lunch | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 3 | Session Chair - | ||||
14:00-15:00 | 60 | Mentoring session | TBC | ||
15:00-15:45 | 45 min | Afternoon Tea - EDI Committee meet and greet | Illawarra Gallery | ||
Session 4 | Session Chair - | ||||
15:45-16:00 | 15 | Dark Matter Impacts, asteroids and primordial black holes | Jeremy Mould | Asteroid impacts have entered our consciousness as existential threats. What has been the impact of primordial black holes on the Galaxy's planets? Is there an anthropic constraint on PBH as dark matter? | |
16:00-16:15 | 15 | Status of the SABRE South Experiment | Lachlan Milligan | SABRE aims to provide a model independent test of the signal observed by DAMA/LIBRA through two separate detectors that rely on joint ultra-high NaI(Tl) purity crystal R&D activities: SABRE South at SUPL Australia and SABRE North at LNGS Italy. Ultra-high purity crystals are immersed in a liquid scintillator veto, further surrounded by passive shielding and a plastic scintillator muon veto. Significant work has been undertaken to assess and mitigate background from the detector materials, and to understand the performance of both the crystal and veto systems. The SABRE South muon detectors were commissioned in SUPL this year, with measurements of muon flux and angular distribution ongoing. These are the first detectors to be commissioned in SUPL. The physics program of SABRE South is also being developed, with basic sensitivity studies having been performed. Assembly of SABRE South is planned for the coming year. | |
16:15-16:30 | 15 | Asymmetric Dark Matter from semi-annihilation | Avirup Ghosh | Strong constraints from dark matter (DM) indirect detection observations have already shrunk the allowed parameter space for thermal WIMPs substantially. Asymmetric DM provides an alternative avenue to reconcile GeV-TeV scale DM with indirect detection observations. In this talk I shall show how a simple semi-annihilation like interaction can induce asymmetry in the DM which is further enhanced by the simple WIMP like pair-annihilation process. I shall also show how a concrete particle physics model allows such dynamics. | |
16:30-16:45 | 15 | Two-Higgs Models: a Possible Dark Matter Portal and 95 GeV Anomaly Candidate | Navneet Krishnan | Two-Higgs Doublet Models are a class of well-motivated Beyond Standard Model extensions, able to answer existing questions about the Strong CP Problem and Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry. I investigate the application of these models with an additional scalar singlet as a portal to WIMP dark matter, and to a series of anomalies at 95GeV at the LHC and LEP. | |
16:45-17:00 | 15 | An overview of CYGNUS' reach for dark matter and neutrino searches | Chiara Lisotti | As dark matter experiments grow in size and more of the available parameter space is investigated and excluded, it is necessary to plan ahead to circumvent the recently observed neutrino fog, which constitutes a near-irreducible background for an experiment sensitive to only recoil energy. The direction of the incoming flux of dark matter is unique, hence it provides a smoking-gun signal to unambiguously claim discovery; accessing this information would then make it possible to discern between dark matter and other sources. To accurately determine the origin of an incoming particle, a directional detector must be capable of resolving the spatial dimensions of the ionization tracks, for example micro-pattern gas detectors (MPGDs), which can be used as the readouts for gas time projection chamber (TPC)-based experiments; an example of such a set-up is CYGNUS. The CYGNUS consortium aims to build a global network of gas TPCs with both energy and directional sensitivity to reconstruct the signals event-by-event, to distinguish possible dark matter signals from the neutrino background from the Sun, as well as study the background itself and detect other feebly-interacting extraterrestrial particles. In this talk, I will give an overview of the physics potential of CYGNUS in terms of dark matter and neutrinos, and describe ongoing studies to derive the specifications needed to perform this search in future experiments. | |
17:00 | Close | ||||
19:00-22:00 | Workshop Dinner and Awards | The Deck |
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