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January[0] =["16","Jose Prieto","Princeton","The All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN): Big Science with Small Telescopes","","",""];
January[1] =["23" ,"Jihad Touma","American University of Beirut","Three Pieces in the Form of a Ring","I review progress on formally interrelated problems of current astrophysical import: a- The thermodynamics and dynamics of stellar clusters around super-massive black holes; b- The dynamics of multi-planet systems in binaries.","",""];
January[2] =["30" ,"Damiano Caprioli","Princeton","Supernova Remnants as Galactic Cosmic-ray Factories","One century after the pioneering discovery of cosmic rays by V. Hess, the present generation of X- and gamma-ray telescopes is finally unravelling the origin of extraterrestrial particles with energies up to 10\^8 GeV, which are thought to be accelerated in the forward shocks of Galactic supernova remnants (SNRs). I discuss the present theoretical understanding of particle acceleration at non-relativistic, collisionless shocks, addressing with both analytical and numerical kinetic techniques the crucial interplay between accelerated ions and magnetic turbulence. In SNRs, in fact, magnetic fields turn out to be factors of 10-100 larger than in the interstellar medium because of plasma instabilities triggered by energetic particles. In particular, I show 2D and 3D hybrid (fluid electrons - kinetic ions) simulations, discussing the efficiency of Fermi acceleration and the role of the cosmic-ray-induced instabilities in amplifying the magnetic field up to the levels inferred at the blast waves of young Galactic SNRs. Finally, I outline the observational counterparts of such a theory in terms of multi-wavelength emission, with a special attention to SN1006 and Tycho, arguably the best SNRs where to test particle acceleration and magnetic field amplification.","",""];
February[0]=["6" ,"Yashar Hezaveh","Stanford","ALMA observations of strongly lensed dusty star forming galaxies and prospects for mapping the small scale structure of dark matter halos","Wide area surveys in mm/submm-wave (SPT, Herschel, ACT, Planck) have discovered a large population of strongly lensed, dusty, star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) at very high redshifts (z=2-6). I will present ALMA observations of a sample of strongly lensed DSFGs discovered by the South Pole Telescope and review the main science results. I will then present our current program to map the small scale structure of dark matter halos using these lenses. I will discuss methods of detecting low-mass dark matter subhalos and measuring the power spectrum of dark matter in the lenses (using gravitationally induced image perturbations). The results of this study are expected to place new constraints on particle properties of dark matter.","",""];
February[1]=["13" ,"Paolo Mazzali","Astrophysics Research Institute","Supernovae and Gamma-ray Bursts","The properties of the supernovae discovered in coincidence with long-duration Gamma-ray Bursts will be reviewed, and compared to those of Supernovae for which GRBs are not observed. The SNe associated with GRBs are of Type Ic. They are brighter than the norm, and show very broad absorption lines in their spectra, indicative of high expansion velocities and hence of large explosion kinetic energies. There is strong evidence for gross asymmetries in the SN ejecta. SNe associated with X-ray flashes are significantly less luminous, massive and energetic. They also appear to be less aspherical. This evidence suggests that GRB/SNe come from more massive stars. For GRB/SNe the collapsar model is traditionally favoured, while XRF/SNe may host magnetars. While the properties of the associated GRB can vary widely, those of the SNe seem to be almost constant. Possible implications of this will be discussed.","",""];
February[2]=["20","Brice Menard","Johns Hopkins","Introducing Clustering Redshifts","","",""];
February[3]=["27","Renee Hlozek","Princeton","Small-scale CMB cosmology: ACT, Planck and beyond","The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) has mapped the microwave sky to arcminute scales. Efficient map-making and spectrum-estimation techniques allow us to probe the acoustic peaks deep into the damping tail, and allow for confirmation of the concordance model, and test for deviations from the standard cosmological picture. We present constraints on a variety of cosmological parameters using the 3-year ACT dataset. We re-aalyze the Planck data and find that the 217GHs x 217GHz detector set spectrum used in the Planck analysis is responsible for some of the tension between the Planck parameters and other astronomical measurements. We will describe our map-based foreground cleaning procedure, which relies on a combination of 353GHz and 545GHz maps to produce residual foregrounds in the intermediate frequency maps used for cosmological inference. We compare our cleaning procedure with the foreground modeling used by the Planck team and find good agreement. The difference in parameters between our analysis and that of the Planck team is mostly due to our use of cross-spectra from the publicly available survey maps instead of their use of the detector set cross-spectra which include pixles only observed in one of the surveys. We show evidence suggesting residual systematics in the detector set spectra used in the Planck likelihood code, which are substentially reduced for our spectra.","",""];
March[0]   =["6" ,"Brian Metzger","Columbia","Extremes of compact object birth, from the dimmest to the super-luminous","I will describe recent work on the observable signatures of compact object birth in two situations. The first scenario is the coalescence of binary neutron stars, the primary source for the direct detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO. A generic feature of such mergers and their aftermath is the ejection of neutron-rich material, which synthesizes heavy radioactive elements as it expands away from the merger site. Thermal emission produced by the decay of these nuclei powers a dim optical transient known as a `kilonova'. I will show how the colors and duration of the kilonova may encode information about the post-merger evolution (in particular, the time of black hole formation) not otherwise available in the detected gravitational waveform. The second scenario I will describe is the formation of a rapidly rotating, strongly magnetized neutron star (a `millisecond magnetar') following the core collapse of a massive star. The birth of such objects has been suggested to explain a recently discovered class of `super-luminous' supernovae. I will present a model for the evolution of young millisecond pulsar wind nebulae that describes how their non-thermal radiation `thermalizes' with the surrounding opaque ejecta, producing anomalously bright optical emission. Nebular X-rays may be sufficiently luminous to re-ionize--and hence to escape from--the ejecta within months after the explosion, providing a potential `smoking gun' test of the magnetar model.","",""];
March[1]   =["13" ,"Matthew Kunz","Princeton","Firehose and Mirror Instabilities in a Collisionless Shearing Plasma","Describing the large-scale behavior of weakly collisional magnetized plasmas, such as the solar wind, hot accretion flows, or the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters, necessitates a detailed understanding of the kinetic-scale physics governing the dynamics of magnetic fields and the transport of momentum and heat. This physics is complicated by the fact that such plasmas are expected to exhibit particle distribution functions with unequal thermal pressures in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the local magnetic field. This pressure anisotropy can trigger fast microscale instabilities -- namely, firehose and mirror -- which solar-wind observations suggest to be effective at regulating the pressure anisotropy to marginally stable levels. In this talk, I will use the results of weakly nonlinear theory and of new hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell simulations to address how marginal stability is achieved and maintained in a plasma whose pressure anisotropy is continuously driven by a shearing magnetic field. Elucidating this physics is a crucial step towards understanding why the intracluster medium avoids catastrophic cooling, how angular momentum is transported in hot accretion flows, and what shapes the observed distribution function in the solar wind.","",""];
March[2]   =["20","Tim Morton","Princeton","Extracting Exoplanet Demographics from the Kepler Survey","The Kepler survey has revolutionized the field of exoplanets by its discovery of thousands of transiting planet candidates. However, translating the Kepler discoveries into knowledge about the underlying demographics of exoplanets is a non-trivial task. My talk will focus on one aspect of this task---what to do about the problem of astrophysical false positives. I will describe a procedure I have developed to efficiently calculate Kepler false positive probabilities, and present some preliminary results of applying this procedure to all the Kepler candidates. I will also give a quick overview of several other ongoing projects I am pursuing related to Kepler and exoplanet demographics.","",""];
March[3]   =["27","Mehrdad Mirbabayi","IAS","Discharging black holes in massive electrodynamics and disappearing black holes in massive gravity","I define and calculate the ``discharge mode'' for a Schwarzschild black hole in massive electrodynamics. For small photon mass, the discharge mode describes the decay of the electric field of a charged star collapsing into a black hole. I argue that a similar ``discharge of mass'' occurs in massive gravity and leads to a strange process of black hole disappearance.","",""];
April[0]   =["3" ,"Alyson Brooks","Rutgers","Re-Examining Astrophysical Constraints on the Dark Matter Model","The cosmological model based on cold dark matter (CDM) and dark energy has been hugely successful in describing the observed evolution and large scale structure of our Universe.  However, at small scales (in the smallest galaxies and at the centers of larger galaxies), a number of observations seem to conflict with the predictions of CDM cosmology, leading to recent interest in Warm Dark Matter (WDM) and Self-Interacting Dark Matter (SIDM) models. These small scales, though, are also regions dominated by the influence of baryons. I will present results from high resolution cosmological galaxy simulations that include both baryons and dark matter to show that baryonic physics can significantly alter the dark matter structure and substructure of galaxies, revolutionizing our expectations for galaxy structure and influencing our  interpretation of the Dark Matter model.","",""];
April[1]   =["10","Smadar Naoz","Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics","The Origin of Retrograde Hot Jupiters","The search for extra-solar planets has led to the surprising discovery of many Jupiter-like planets in very close proximity to their host star, the so-called ``hot Jupiters'' (HJs). Even more surprising, many of these HJs have orbits that are eccentric or highly inclined with respect to the equator of the star, and some (about 25%) even orbiting counter to the spin direction of the star. This poses a unique challenge to all planet formation models. We show that secular interactions between Jupiter-like planet and another perturber in the system can easily produce retrograde HJ orbits. We show that in the frame of work of secular hierarchical triple system (the so-called Kozai Lidov mechanism) the inner orbit's angular momentum component parallel to the total angular momentum (i.e., the z-component of the inner orbit angular momentum) need not be constant. In fact, it can even change sign, leading to a retrograde orbit. A brief excursion to very high eccentricity during the chaotic evolution of the inner orbit allows planet-star tidal interactions to rapidly circularize that orbit, decoupling the planets and forming a retrograde hot Jupiter. The high observed incidence of planets orbiting counter to the stellar spin direction may suggest that three body secular interactions are an important part of their dynamical history.","",""];
April[2]   =["17","Vera Gluscevic","IAS","What we can(not) learn from dark matter direct-detection experiments","The field of dark matter study has reported anumber of anomalies in recent years, and the upcoming generation of experiments hopes to directly detect particles from the local halo population through scattering off nuclei in underground detectors. In this context, it has become particularly important to understand and quantify the information content of the data sets they will produce. In this talk, I will discuss the impact of uncertainties regarding both the astrophysics of dark matter and the phenomenology of the cattering processes on the interpretation of the forthcoming data. I will demonstrate the importance of recombining data sets from multiple experiments with different target materials and recoil-energy windows in order to distinguish a range of underlying models for dark matter--nucleon interactions and recover key particle properties of dark matter.","",""];
April[3]   =["24","Andrew Benson","Carnegie Institution for Science","Quantitative Predictions for Galaxy Formation","Galaxy formation involves a complex interplay of many nonlinear, poorly understood physical processes. This fact has limited progress in the field. Recent work has made significant steps forward by systematically surveying model parameter spaces to find models that best describe observed data. However, this work has been limited by inadequate treatment of the observational uncertainties. In this talk I will describe the results of a careful program aimed at quantifying the uncertainties in both observations and models, and using these results to carefully constrain a simple galaxy formation model from which quantitative predictions can be extracted. I will also describe the next steps in this program to add additional constraints, incorporate more physics into the model, and meet the computational challenges of surveying high-dimensional parameter spaces.","",""];
May[0]     =["1" ,"Kevin Lewis","Princeton","500 Days on Mars: Initial Results from the Curiosity Rover Mission","","",""];
May[1]     =["8","Sean McWilliams","West Virginia University","Signatures of massive galaxy mergers at z<1","","",""];
May[2] =["15","Bence Kocsis","IAS","Liquid crystals of stars and black holes at the centers of galaxies","Galactic nuclei are the densest stellar environments in the Universe. The observed stellar distribution within the innermost 0.5 pc of the Milky Way exhibits spherical and counter-rotating disk structures. Existing theoretical models cannot convincingly explain the origin of these stellar disks. I will show that the long-term gravitational interaction between stars in these systems resembles the interaction between axisymmetric molecules constituting a liquid crystal. The observed distribution can be explained by an isotropic-nematic phase transition. Disks of stellar mass black holes in galactic nuclei could be abundant sources of gravitational waves detectable by LIGO.","",""];    
May[3]     =["22","","","","","",""];
May[4]      =["29","","","","","",""];