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January[0]=["12","Amy Kimball","University of Washington","Testing AGN Evolution Models Through the Comparison of Semi-Analytic Simulations and a Large Observational Data Set","Quasars and radio galaxies display great morphological variety that correlates with other properties such as spectral slope and luminosity. The unification theory for radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) attempts to explain much of this diversity as arising from anisotropic processes that appear different because of viewing angle. We are conducting a statistical test of AGN evolutionary models in the context of the unification theory by comparing simulated data from semi-analytic models to a large observational catalog. I will discuss the compilation of the publicly-available radio/optical catalog, developed for this purpose, from several large sky surveys. The catalog has over 2 million objects detected at 20 cm, with over 20,000 detected by all four radio source surveys. Radio color-magnitude-morphology distributions for this sample show clear structure suggesting strong underlying physical correlations. Roughly one third of sources have an optical counterpart, and so can be classified as galaxy (resolved) or quasar (unresolved). Using a subset of approximately 20,000 sources detected at 92 and 20 cm, as well as optically, I am developing an AGN sample with well-understood distributions in redshift, size, luminosity, and spectral index for comparison with the AGN evolution models as a test of underlying AGN physics and the unification theory. I will discuss the current state of this project as well as future goals, including further applications of the catalog and improvements to the semi-analytic simulations.","Tuesday","11:30AM"];
January[1]=["19","Hanno Rein","Cambridge DAMTP","Planetary systems, turbulence and Saturn's rings"," The discovery of more than 400 extrasolar planets keeps challenging the theory of planet formation. Multi-planetary systems are of particular interest. Their orbital parameters allow us to constrain properties of the otherwise unobservable formation phase. I will show that the planetary system HD45364 had to be formed in a massive protoplanetary disc in order to avoid the 2:1 resonance and get captured in the observed 3:2 resonance. The system HD128311, however, had to be formed in a very turbulent disc. The turbulence (very likely due to the MRI) was strong enough to almost completely destroy the resonance. Using such coherent formation scenarios, one can also reduce the dimensionality of the parameter space dramatically when fitting orbits to observed radial velocity curves. This procedure gives a better fit to the observed RV data and furthermore provides the first testable predictions of orbital parameters from planet formation theory. Saturn’s rings are a small scale version of a protoplanetary disc. We can observe the same phenomena as in protoplanetary disc but in real time, because one orbit is extremely short (13 hours). The Cassini spacecraft discovered several small moonlets in the A-ring. Similar to proto-planets, they are subject to orbital migration. Depending on the properties of the ring particles, this migration can be laminar or stochastic. Monitoring the random walk provides interesting clues on the nature of the ring particles. I present new results using analytic and numerical models that will help to determine the origin of Saturn’s rings: moonlets consist of fragments from a catastrophic event in Saturn’s past.","Tuesday","11:30AM"];
January[2]=["21","Nick Cowan","University of Washington","Exo-Cartography: Time-Resolved Photometry of Exoplanets","The first potentially habitable exoplanets will likely be discovered in the next two years, but they will be much fainter than their host stars, so these worlds will at first be studied indirectly. Fortunately, the existence of short-period giant planets allows us to test the observational and analytic techniques that we one day hope to use on habitable exoplanets. I will describe theoretical and observational studies of thermal and reflected light from unresolved planets. I will begin with some of the first observations of thermal phase variations in extrasolar planetary systems and what these tell us about the planets. I will then develop light curve inversion as a general technique to recover as much longitudinal information as possible given observations of these phase variations. Lastly, I will show how the multi-band brightness variations of an unresolved planet may be used to create a color map of the planet showing the relative positions of its continents and oceans.","",""];
January[3]=["28","David Weinberg","Ohio State","A Cosmological Random Walk","Taking seriously the spirit of an informal seminar, I will run quickly through a range of loosely connected topics, including as many as I can get to of: photoionization and the dwarf satellite population, radial mixing in disk galaxy simulations, physical constraints from observed quasar clustering, void probabilities and scale-dependent bias in galaxy clustering, the roles of pressure and thermal broadening in setting the coherence scales of the Lyman-alpha forest, the composite spectrum of Lyman-alpha forest absorbers, large-scale correlations between galaxies and intergalactic dust, and the rather disturbing answer to the question `can SPH solve hydrostatic equilibrium?'","",""];
February[0]=["4","","","","","",""];
February[1]=["11","","","","","",""];
February[2]=["18","Andrei Gruzinov","NYU","Magnetic Equilibrium","","",""];
February[3]=["25","Masataka Fukugita","University of Tokyo","Matter distribution around galaxies","","",""];
March[0]=["4","Ruth Murray-Clay","CfA","Frontier Planets:  Formation and Dynamics at Wide Separations","Though ~400 planets are currently known, discoveries at the observational frontiers continue to yield new classes of planets.  The three gas giants directly-imaged orbiting HR 8799 comprise the first multi-planet system detected at wide separations around a main sequence star.  Core accretion scenarios, already strained at the outer limits of our solar system, have difficulty explaining these objects.  Though most plausible for massive planets at large separations, formation by gravitational instability requires that the system's protoplanetary disk passed through a fine-tuned region of parameter space.  Orbital stability requirements imply that the HR 8799 planets occupy at least one and possibly two mean motion resonances, suggesting that they migrated toward one another and may have migrated substantially from their formation locations.  I will describe how wide separation giants inform our theoretical understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems.","",""];
March[1]=["11","Gordon Ogilvie","Cambridge","Tidally interacting planets and stars: fluid dynamics and the fate of planets","","",""];
March[2]=["18","Yoram Lithwick","CITA","Secular Instability: Formation of Hot Jupiters and the Organization of Planetary Systems","In a planetary system with well-spaced planets, there is a nonlinear instability that can lead to chaotic behaviour. One of the planets may gradually become unstable,  in which case its orbit can become highly eccentric and/or inclined. If an unstable planet comes close to the star, its orbit will be circularized by tides.  This can explain the numerous Jupiter-mass planets that have been discovered to orbit very close to the central star (`hot Jupiters'). After an unstable planet escapes the influence of the other planets, the remaining planetary system becomes  increasingly  stable.  This may explain the stable architecture of observed systems.","",""];
March[3]=["25","Anders Johansen","Leiden","From pebble to planetesimal","In the early stages of planet formation dust grains collect to form km-sized planetesimals. Growth beyond a few cms is frustrated by collisional shattering and rapid radial drift of pebbles and rocks. I will present my work on the dynamics of pebbles, rocks, and boulders in gaseous protoplanetary disks. The loose drag force coupling with the gas causes particles to pile up in large scale geostrophic gas pressure bumps which arise in turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability. The local density of rocks and boulders becomes high enough to allow a gravitational contraction into gravitationally bound clusters with masses comparable to solid objects of several hundred kilometers in diameter. I will discuss recent high resolution simulations of this process performed at the Blue Gene/P system at the Juelich Research Center. As 100-km scale protoplanets may form in an environment dense in dust and pebbles, the accretion of small solids is important for their further growth. I show that accretion of pebbles in a gaseous environment leads to prograde spin up of the growing protoplanets, in agreement with the trend for prograde rotation displayed by the largest asteroids.","",""];
April[0]=["1","Amit Yadav","IAS","Probing the Physics of the Beginning: Primordial Non-Gaussianity and Gravitational Waves","In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the knowledge of what the universe is made of, to why the universe is the way it is. In my talk I will focus on what we can expect to learn about the dynamics of the universe at the very earliest moments. I will discuss theoretical predictions from inflationary models and their observational  consequences in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. In particular I will focus on two observational signatures, primordial non-Gaussianity and gravitational waves, as probes for the physics of the beginning.","",""];
April[1]=["8","Slava Mukhanov","Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munich","Higgs Mechanism for Graviton","","special location","physics library"];
April[2]=["15","Jason Kalirai","STScI","Galaxy Formation and Evolution in the Next Decade","A fundamental quest of modern astrophysics is the study of how the basic building blocks of the Universe, galaxies, form and evolve.  Our knowledge of the structure and assembly processes of these systems comes primarily from two flavors of studies; detailed observations of individual stars in nearby resolved stellar populations and large surveys of galaxies outside our neigborhood.  For the former approach, a lack of statistics has hampered our ability to generalize the picture of one galaxy (i.e., the Milky Way) to a global sense of galaxy formation.  In this talk, I'll first discuss several recent results from large imaging and spectroscopic projects targeting Local Group galaxies.  The observed characteristics (e.g., structure, age, metallicity, and kinematics) and morphologies of both dwarf galaxies in the Local Group and M31 itself have been measured with unprecedented detail, and directly inform the stochastic processes that have shaped galaxies to their present state.  Second, I'll present some thoughts on how such resolved photometric and spectroscopic studies can be extended to a sample of galaxies beyond the Local Group in the next decade.  Of specific importance for this research are observatories such as LSST, 30-m telescopes, and JWST.","",""];
April[3]=["22","Rashid Sunyaev","Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics","Accretion of gas with small angular momentum onto supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies","","",""];
April[4]=["29","Justin Khoury","U Penn.","Symmetron Fields: Screening Long-Range Forces Through Local Symmetry Restoration","I will present a novel screening mechanism that allows a scalar field to mediate a long range ~Mpc force of gravitational strength in the cosmos while satisfying local tests of gravity. The mechanism hinges on local symmetry restoration in the presence of matter. In regions of sufficiently high matter density, the field is drawn towards \phi = 0 where its coupling to matter vanishes and the \phi->-\phi symmetry is restored. In regions of low density, however, the symmetry is spontaneously broken, and the field couples to matter with gravitational strength. The model predicts deviations from general relativity in the solar system that are within reach of next-generation experiments, as well as astrophysically observable violations of the equivalence principle. The symmetron can be distinguished experimentally from Brans-Dicke gravity, chameleon theories and brane-world modifications of gravity.","",""];
May[0]=["6","Daniel Baumann","IAS","Cosmological Perturbations as an Effective Fluid","","",""];
May[1]=["13","Andrew MacFadyen","NYU","Relativistic Flows and Magnetic Fields","","",""];
May[2]=["20","Christoph Pfrommer","CITA","Magnetic fields in galaxy clusters"," Clusters of galaxies, filled with hot, magnetised plasma, are the largest bound objects in existence and an important touchstone in understanding the formation of structures in our Universe.  Because in clusters, thermal conduction follows field lines, magnetic fields strongly shape the cluster's thermal history, which remains mysterious; some should have long since cooled and collapsed.  In a seemingly unrelated puzzle, recent observations of Virgo cluster spiral galaxies imply ridge  of strong, coherent magnetic fields offset from their centre.  Here I demonstrate, using 3D magneto-hydrodynamical simulations, that such ridges are easily explained by galaxies sweeping up field lines as they orbit inside the cluster. This magnetic drape is then literally lit up with cosmic rays from the galaxies' stars, generating coherent polarised emission at the galaxies' leading edges.  This immediately presents a first technique for probing local orientations and characteristic length scales of cluster magnetic fields.  The first application of this technique, mapping the field of the Virgo cluster, gives a startling result - outside a central region, the magnetic field is preferentially oriented radially.  Our results strongly suggest a mechanism for maintaining some clusters in a `non-cooling-core' state.","",""];
September[0]=["23","Renu Malhotra","University of Arizona","The Early History of the Solar System","","",""];
September[1]=["30","Scott Kenyon","CfA","","","",""];
October[0]=["7","","","","","",""];
October[1]=["14","Yacine Ali-Haïmoud","Caltech","Fast and Precise Cosmic Hydrogen Recombination Theory","","",""];
October[2]=["21","Brian Lacki","Ohio State","","","",""];
October[3]=["28","Adam Burrows","Princeton Univ","Dimension as the Key to the Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernova Explosions.","","",""];
November[0]=["4","Tracy Slatyer","IAS","---","","",""];
November[1]=["11","Daniel Grin","IAS","---","","",""];
November[2]=["18","Jonathan Mitchell","UCLA","","","",""];
November[3]=["25","Thanksgiving -- no talk","","","","",""];
December[0]=["2","","","","","",""];
December[1]=["9","","","","","",""];
December[2]=["16","","","","","",""];