Talks

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is completing final preparations for first high energy collisions in 2009. This talk will cover: the physics motivation of the LHC, highlights of the ATLAS experiment, commissioning, and prospects for new physics discoveries ahead.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the bosonic string based on the Polyakov path integral and conformal field theory. We introduce central ideas of string theory, the tools of conformal field theory, the Polyakov path integral, and the covariant quantization of the string. We discuss string interactions and cover the tree-level and one loop amplitudes. More advanced topics such as T-duality and D-branes will be taught as part of the course. The course is geared for M.Sc. and Ph.D. students enrolled in Collaborative Ph.D. Program in Theoretical Physics. Required previous course work: Quantum Field Theory (AM516 or equivalent). The course evaluation will be based on regular problem sets that will be handed in during the term. The primary text is the book: 'String theory. Vol. 1: An introduction to the bosonic string. J. Polchinski (Santa Barbara, KITP) . 1998. 402pp. Cambridge, UK: Univ. Pr. (1998) 402 p.' All interested students should contact Alex Buchel at [email protected] as soon as possible.

I will report results from simulations of galaxy-scale dark halos of unprecedented numerical resolution. Convergence tests demonstrate detailed convergence for (sub)structures for over six decades in mass, enabling detailed forecasts of the expected dark matter signal both in Earth-bound direct-detection experiments as well as in indirect detection experiments which attempt to image dark matter annihilation radiation in gamma rays.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the bosonic string based on the Polyakov path integral and conformal field theory. We introduce central ideas of string theory, the tools of conformal field theory, the Polyakov path integral, and the covariant quantization of the string. We discuss string interactions and cover the tree-level and one loop amplitudes. More advanced topics such as T-duality and D-branes will be taught as part of the course. The course is geared for M.Sc. and Ph.D. students enrolled in Collaborative Ph.D. Program in Theoretical Physics. Required previous course work: Quantum Field Theory (AM516 or equivalent). The course evaluation will be based on regular problem sets that will be handed in during the term. The primary text is the book: 'String theory. Vol. 1: An introduction to the bosonic string. J. Polchinski (Santa Barbara, KITP) . 1998. 402pp. Cambridge, UK: Univ. Pr. (1998) 402 p.' All interested students should contact Alex Buchel at [email protected] as soon as possible.

Varied experimental results have recently sparked theoretical interest in the dark matter sector. I will review some of these results and the basic ideas in particle physics that might explain them, as well as some requirements for those models to work. Then I'll discuss a new model dark matter sector that can better explain many of the experimental results. I'll also mention the interesting cosmological history required in this type of model. Finally, if there's time, I'll discuss ongoing efforts at McGill to develop basic physics shared by many of the new dark matter models.

Brane Tilings are known to describe the largest known class of SCFT's in 3+1 dimensions. There is a well established formalism to find AdS_5 x SE_5 duals to these SCFT's and to compare results on both sides. This talk extends this formalism to 2+1 dimensional SCFT's, living on the world volume of M2 branes, which are dual to AdS_4 x SE_7 backgrounds of M theory. The SCFT's are quiver gauge theories with 4 supercharges (N=2 in 2+1 dimensions) and Chern Simons (CS) couplings. They admit a moduli space of vacuum configurations which is a CY4 cone over SE_7. The talk will go over the formalism and look at several examples in detail. The computation of scaling dimensions will be mentioned and relations to regular toric Fano 3-folds if time permits.