Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 9–12, 2022; New York
Session B09: Undergraduate Research IIRecordings Available Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: SPS Room: Juilliard |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:45AM - 10:57AM |
B09.00001: Millicharged Particles at the Short Baseline Near Detector at Fermilab Amy Flather We explore using the Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) at Fermilab to perform a search for millicharged particles (mCPs). Millicharged particles are hypothetical new particles that have a fractional charge compared to the electron and may make up a portion of the dark matter in the universe. SBND is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) placed in the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. Such detectors have previously demonstrated the ability to search for mCPs, and in this talk, we will present the projected flux of mCPs in SBND and show the region of the mCP parameter space that SBND will be able to probe. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:57AM - 11:09AM |
B09.00002: Zone Visibility and Luminosity of N-Zone Exoplanets: A Computational Approach Michelle Arrigo Exoplanets are the foremost cosmological candidates for discovery of extraterrestrial life. Part of their characterization process includes calculation of their luminosity due to blackbody temperature. However, their luminosity is also partially determined by their visibility to Earth as they orbit their host star(s). Existing orbital models commonly employ a dayside-nightside convention for visibility determination, limiting calculations to two zones (N=2) of an exoplanet, one zone each for the dayside and nightside. The N-Zone model developed during this research splits a planet into any number of zones from user input, and the luminosity output varies as zones of different temperature become more or less visible to Earth. This computational model exploits this advantage to grant exoplanet scientists a greater degree of precision in luminosity calculations as they characterize exoplanets. Each zone (n) of an N-Zone exoplanet acts as an independent blackbody. The N-Zone program employs visibility logic and luminosity equations that will apply to exoplanets of varying orbital constraints. The N-Zone computational model outputs visibility and luminosity plots for N ≥ 2 exoplanets and may be used by exoplanet scientists to characterize temperature distributions of exoplanets. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:09AM - 11:21AM |
B09.00003: Discovery and Multi-Wavelength Studies of New Hard Gamma-Ray Sources Using Fermi-LAT Data Aidan J Klingelberg, Marcos Santander Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray emissions have become increasingly important in multi-messenger astronomy due to their ability to reveal information about other high energy processes such as neutrino and cosmic ray production and the nature of the isotropic gamma-ray background. The goal of this project is to search for new sources of these VHE emissions using data collected over the past 13 years with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) and search for X-ray counterparts, in particular using the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The LAT photon data was isolated to energies above 50 GeV to search for spatial clusters, which were compared with two Fermi catalogues, the Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL) and the Fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog (4FGL), to reveal new sources of VHE gamma rays and study their multi-wavelength emission. Through this work, we will be able to generate models that will help us gain insight into the types of environments in which these VHE gamma rays were created and their connection to diffuse high-energy backgrounds. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:21AM - 11:33AM |
B09.00004: Exploring the Spectra of Very-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Blazars Daniela Hikari Yano, Reshmi Mukherjee Blazars are active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that launch relativistic jets directed toward us and comprise the majority of the detected very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray sources. The curvature of blazar’s energy spectrum can give us information about particle acceleration, cooling mechanisms, and gamma-ray propagation, consequently, allowing us to explore the mysteries of the physical mechanisms in jets and the intervening space between the source and the observer. The gamma rays are attenuated through pair production with the extragalactic background light (EBL), leading to electromagnetic cascades that can be affected by the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF). These effects can be reflected in the curvature of the energy flux spectrum. This study uses data collected by Fermi-LAT and VERITAS observatories over a period of ten years. Fermi-LAT is a space-based observatory that detects gamma rays with energies from 50 MeV to 1 TeV and VERITAS is a ground-based observatory that detects VHE gamma rays with energies from 85 GeV to 30 TeV. Here we present temporal and spectral analyses for a sample of bright TeV blazars, using Bayesian blocks to define periods with steady flux and accounting for the absorption effect from the EBL. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:33AM - 11:45AM |
B09.00005: Applications of alternative gravity to the recent 2021 Bizyaev et al. Ultra-faint edge-on galaxies William M Kerin, James G O'Brien In recent years, elements of standard gravity have come into question due to the lack of observational evidence of dark matter. Further, new empirical patterns present in rotation curve data have given new testable features for standard and alternative gravity. In this presentation we examine a very recent survey conducted by Bizyaev et al. (2021), which consists of 138 superthin edge-on galaxies to which rotation curves were observed. From this set, we examine the 20 rotation curves considered to be of the highest quality, which encompasses a variety of red and blue galaxies. In this work, we expand upon the modeling done by Bizyaev et al., and further apply alternative gravity to rotation curve models. For the scope of this work we include Conformal Gravity, Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), and the Radial Acceleration Rule (RAR). For each of the alternative gravitational theories, rotation curve fits, as well as the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation and the RAR are explored, thus giving us a robust first treatment of this modern galactic data set through the lens of alternative gravity. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:45AM - 11:57AM |
B09.00006: Using Radio Relics to Help Reconstruct the Dynamics of Galaxy Cluster Mergers Patrick J O'Mullan, David Wittman Merging galaxy clusters are a unique environment in which to probe the behavior and properties of dark matter. To best understand these properties, one must be able to reconstruct the dynamics of these massive events. Given that these events occur over billions of years, we cannot directly observe many of the parameters dictating the evolution of these events, and therefore must infer them through various methods. Previous work by Wittman inferred these parameters from simulated analog mergers recorded from a cosmological n-body simulation (BigMDPL). This work develops a mathematical model that could estimate the projected position of the shock wave that is launched at pericenter crossing. In systems where the shock is visible as a radio "relic" or X-ray discontinuity, this allows us to constrain the viewing angle and time since pericenter. This model was implemented into existing code to analyze hundreds of analog clusters to estimate the parameters of a similar real-world observation. This method was used to examine the Sausage (CIZA J2242. 8+5301) as well as the Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56) and compared to established consensus. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:57AM - 12:09PM |
B09.00007: Heavy, Multi-Scattering dark matter particles in DEAP-3600 Michela Lai DEAP-3600 is the largest running direct detection experiment with 3.3 tonnes of liquid argon. The detector, located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, is primarily designed to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Besides WIMPs, noble liquid detectors can also be sensitive to super-massive dark matter candidates, up to the Planck scale. These dark matter candidates might have been produced non-thermally, like in inflaton decays mechanisms, or as radiation from primordial black holes, as well as extended thermal production in a dark sector. Specifically, dark matter candidates with masses above 10^{16} GeV and cross-sections in argon above 10^{-24} cm^2, can also reach underground detectors like DEAP-3600. Their large cross-section means that they produce a sequence of collinear nuclear recoils as they traverse the detector, resulting in a signal that is distinct from both WIMPs and backgrounds. This characteristic formed the basis of a dedicated analysis searching for heavy, multi-scattering dark matter. |
Saturday, April 9, 2022 12:09PM - 12:21PM |
B09.00008: The first deep-learning search for radio technosignatures from 820 nearby stars Xiangyuan Ma, Cherry Ng, Leandro Rizk, Steve Croft, Andrew P Siemion, Bryan Brzycki, Howard Isaacson, Jamie Drew, S. Pete Worden, Sofia Z. Sheikh, Imke de Pater, Vishal Gajjar, Daniel Czech, Matt Lebofsky, Hoang John, David MacMahon, Danny C Price The goal of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is to quantify the prevalence of technological life beyond Earth via their ``technosignatures". One theorized technosignature is narrowband Doppler drifting radio signals. The principal challenge in conducting SETI in the radio domain is developing a generalized technique to reject human radio frequency interference (RFI) that dominates the features across the band in searches for technosignatures. Here, we will present the first comprehensive deep-learning-based technosignature search to date, returning 8 promising ETI signals-of-interest for re-observation as part of the Breakthrough Listen initiative. The search comprises 820 unique targets observed with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, totaling over 480hr of on-sky data. We implement a novel beta-Convolutional Variational Autoencoder with an embedded discriminator combined with Random Forest Decision Trees to classify technosignature signals of interest in a semi-unsupervised manner. We compare our results with prior classical techniques on the same dataset and conclude that our algorithm returns more convincing signals of interest with a manageable false positive rate. This novel approach presents itself as a leading solution in accelerating SETI and other transient research into the new age of data-driven astronomy. |
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