[astroseminar at Sapienza] 11/10/2017 at 14:00: Christopher G. Tully

[Elia Battistelli]

Title: PTOLEMY: An Underground Experiment to Search for MeV Dark Matter 
and the Cosmic Neutrino Background
Speaker: Christopher G. Tully
Institute: Princeton University
Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2017
Time: 2:00pm
Location: Aula Rasetti, Marconi Building, Dept. of Physics, Sapienza 
University

Abstract:
The Universe is dynamical and has expanded by a factor of over one 
billion between the present-day and the early thermal epoch known as the 
neutrino decoupling. The production of relic neutrinos is within seconds 
of the inflation and heating processes that imprinted the seeds of 
future structure formation in the Universe. These early universe relics 
have cooled under the expansion of the Universe and are sensed 
indirectly through the action of their diminishing thermal velocities on 
large-scale structure formation. Experimental advances have opened up 
new opportunities to directly detect the CNB, an achievement which would 
profoundly confront and extend the sensitivity of precision cosmology 
data. PTOLEMY is a novel method of 2D target surfaces, fabricated from 
Graphene, that has unique directional detection capabilities for MeV 
dark matter and forms a basis for a future large-scale relic neutrino 
detector. The discussion of PTOLEMY focusses on experimental challenges, 
recent developments and the path forward to discovery sensitivity.

web: https://agenda.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=13983