Theory Division

Searches for missing energy at accelerators are a central pillar of the experimental program devoted to solving the dark matter puzzle. However, extended dark sectors may manifest themselves in the form of exotic signatures that are missed by standard searches. In my talk, I will discuss a particularly striking class of such signatures: dark showers... More »

Deep learning is an exciting approach to modern artificial intelligence based on artificial neural networks. The goal of this talk is to provide a blueprint — using tools from physics — for theoretically analyzing deep neural networks of practical relevance. This task will encompass both understanding the statistics of initialized deep networks and determining the... More »

Neutrinos are the most mysterious particles in the standard model. Many of their fundamental properties such as their masses, lifetimes, and nature (Dirac or Majorana) are yet to be pinned down by experiments. Currently, the strongest bound on neutrino masses comes from cosmology. This bound is obtained by scrutinizing the gravitational effect of the cosmic... More »

In this talk, I will discuss a scenario in which today’s dark matter (DM) sector was a sector of conformal field theory (CFT) in the early universe. Since the conformal invariance prevents the existence of mass scale necessary for the dark “matter”, it needs to be broken and I show that it can be achieved... More »

The model for neutrino-induced pion production of [R. Gonzalez-Jimenez et al. Phys. Rev. D 95, 113007 (2017)] is used to describe data for charged-current interactions off carbon in the T2K and MINERvA experiments. This work extends the approach of [Hernandez Nieves and Valverde, Phys. Rev. D 76, 033005 (2007)] to higher hadronic invariant mass by... More »

I will describe some recent work on applying Effective Field Theory (EFT) methodology to three different physically interesting systems.  First I will explain the philosophy and general methodology of EFT.  I will then present three short vignettes.  The first has to do with techniques for systematically computing the EFT parameters from a given more fundamental... More »

Most of the volume of the Universe consists of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), space between collapsed structures like galaxies and galaxy clusters. Extragalactic photons and charged particles that propagate through the Universe spend most of their time in the IGM and can be influenced by its properties. In this talk, I will present a few... More »

Predictions at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order – N3LO – in QCD perturbation theory represent the current cutting edge of precision QFT predictions for LHC phenomenology. In my talk, I discuss the current state of the art and showcase at the hands of some key examples of what we learned from predictions at this order so far. Furthermore,... More »

The recent measurement of the anomalous muon magnetic moment by the E989 experiment at Fermilab appears to confirm the existing tension with the Standard Model (SM), previously reported by the Brookhaven experiment. In light of this result, we revisit the contribution of a kinetically mixed dark photon to g-2, which has been excluded in minimal... More »

Quasi-sterile neutrinos are a natural consequence of dark sectors interacting with the Standard Model (SM) sector via neutrino- and vector-portals. Essentially, quasi-sterile neutrinos are light dark sector fermions with two generic properties: (i) they mix with the active neutrinos of the SM, and (ii) they are charged under a vector mediator that couples feebly to... More »