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The Aerogel Lecture Series unveils the extraordinary potential of aerogels—a class of highly porous solid materials derived from a gel in which the liquid is replaced by gas while maintaining the self-assembled three-dimensional structure. This video presentation features Dr. Mary Carroll and Dr. Ann Anderson from Union College.
The Aerogel Lecture Series unveils the extraordinary potential of aerogels—a class of highly porous solid materials derived from a gel in which the liquid is replaced by gas while maintaining the self-assembled three-dimensional structure. This video presentation features Dr. Sadhan Jana from University of Akron.
The final WVU-DLPP-project year has been a transition year on multiple fronts for the DLPP program. The first is a transition from the mode of operations adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the second is leadership for the program. During the pandemic, the lecture series went to a virtual format to maintain interactions between our distinguished lecturers and the community of small college and University plasma physics programs with an emphasis on underrepresented groups. Prof. John Foster was especially active with his invited lectures in the remote modality of the DLPPseries. While efforts included zoom calls for speakers to interact with students in addition to the seminar, this approach is much less impactful than face-to-face interactions. As we refresh the group of speakers, the lectures will move back to in person visits. We still retain the virtual option for our lecturers to cope with circumstances and remaining health concerns for individual. We have selected a new cohort of distinguished lecturers. A flyer was sent to a list of college and universities to advertise the DLPP speaker-visit opportunity. We have also drafted a thank you letter to the previous cohort who sustained the program through the pandemic. The other transition is the change in leadership, after the selection of the 2023 DLPPcohort, from Dr. Koepke who has been a staunch champion for the program and done a great job growing its presence, to Dr. Kline the co-chair. Dr. Koepke has been transferring his knowledge and providing excellent guidance in this transition. Over the past year, a best practices document was written as a means to capture not only the core program values, but create a living document that can maintain a continual transfer of information to subsequent leader for the program.
The topics for the three lectures for the Canadian Summer School are Lagrangian Models, numerical transport schemes, and chemical and transport models. In the first lecture I will explain the basic components of the Lagrangian model (a trajectory code and a photochemical code), the difficulties in using such a model (initialization) and show some applications in interpretation of aircraft and satellite data. If time permits I will show some results concerning inverse modeling which is being used to evaluate sources of tropospheric pollutants. In the second lecture I will discuss one of the core components of any grid point model, the numerical transport scheme. I will explain the basics of shock capturing schemes, and performance criteria. I will include an example of the importance of horizontal resolution to polar processes. We have learned from NASA's global modeling initiative that horizontal resolution matters for predictions of the future evolution of the ozone hole. The numerical scheme will be evaluated using performance metrics based on satellite observations of long-lived tracers. The final lecture will discuss the evolution of chemical transport models over the last decade. Some of the problems with assimilated winds will be demonstrated, using satellite data to evaluate the simulations.
In these lectures, I describe a variety of efforts to identify or constrain the identity of dark matter by detecting the annihilation or decay products of these particles, or their effects. After reviewing the motivation for indirect searches, I discuss what we have learned about dark matter from observations of gamma rays, cosmic rays and neutrinos, as well as the cosmic microwave background. Measurements such as these have been used to significantly constrain a wide range of thermal relic dark matter candidates, in particular those with masses below a few hundred GeV. I also discuss a number of anomalies and excesses that have been interpreted as possible signals of dark matter, including the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess, the cosmic-ray antiproton excess, the cosmic-ray positron excess, and the 3.5 keV line. These lectures were originally presented as part of the 2018 Theoretical Advanced Study Institute (TASI) summer school on "Theory in an Era of Data". Although intended for advanced graduate students, these lectures may be useful for a wide range of physicists, astrophysicists and astronomers who wish to get an overview of the current state of indirect searches for dark matter.
The lecture notes cover the basic principles of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). They are oriented more toward practical applications than theory, and are intended to serve as a unified source for basic material in the CFD field as well as an introduction to more specialized topics in artificial viscosity and boundary conditions. Each chapter in the test is associated with a videotaped lecture. The basic properties of conservation laws, wave equations, and shock waves are described. The duality of the conservation law and wave representations is investigated, and shock waves are examined in some detail. Finite difference techniques are introduced for the solution of wave equations and conservation laws. Stability analysis for finite difference approximations are presented. A consistent description of artificial viscosity methods are provided. Finally, the problem of nonreflecting boundary conditions are treated.
The Mars Observer mission spacecraft was primarily designed for exploring Mars and the Martian environment. The Mars Observer was launched on September 25, 1992. The spacecraft was lost in the vicinity of Mars on August 21, 1993 when the spacecraft began its maneuvering sequence for Martian orbital insertion. This videotape shows a lecture by Suzanne R. Dodd, the Mission Planning Team Chief for the Mars Observer Project. Ms Dodd begins with a brief overview of the mission and the timeline from the launch to orbital insertion. Ms Dodd then reviews slides showing the trajectory of the spacecraft on its trip to Mars. Slides of the spacecraft being constructed are also shown. She then discusses the Mars orbit insertion and the events that will occur to move the spacecraft from the capture orbit into a mapping orbit. During the trip to Mars, scientists at JPL had devised a new strategy, called Power In that would allow for an earlier insertion into the mapping orbit. The talk summarizes this strategy, showing on a slide the planned transition orbits. There are shots of the Martian moon, Phobos, taken from the Viking spacecraft, as Ms Dodd explains that the trajectory will allow the orbiter to make new observations of that moon. She also explains the required steps to prepare for mapping after the spacecraft has achieved the mapping orbit around Mars. The lecture ends with a picture of Mars from the Observer on its approach to the planet.
A public lecture is a performance, and it is also an invitation to conversation. A lively conversation—especially when one person does most of the talking—requires that the speaker have something to say. Further, a memorable performance requires assiduous preparation. I touch on a number of important elements: preparing the scene and eliminating barriers between you and the audience... engaging your listeners with a narrative arc... the uses of the minute particular... tension and resolution, surprise and drama... experiments and demonstrations, specimens and souvenirs.... showing yourself, and your passion.
Presented here is a transcription of the lecture notes from Professor Allan N. Kaufman’s graduate statistical mechanics course Physics 212A and 212B at the University of California Berkeley from the 1972–1973 academic year. 212A addressed equilibrium statistical mechanics with topics: fundamentals (micro-canonical and sub-canonical ensembles, adiabatic law and action conservation, fluctuations, pressure, and virial theorem), classical fluids and other systems (equation of state, deviations from ideality, virial coefficients and van der Waals potential, canonical ensemble and partition function, quasistatic evolution, grand-canonical ensemble and partition function, chemical potential, simple model of a phase transition, quantum virial expansion, numerical simulation of equations of state, and phase transition), chemical equilibrium (systems with multiple species and chemical reactions, law of mass action, Saha equation, chemical equilibrium including ionization and excited states), and long-range interactions (including Coulomb, dipole, and gravitational interactions, Debye–Hückel theory, and shielding). 212B addressed nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with topics: fundamentals (definitions: realizations, moments, characteristic function, and discrete variables), Brownian motion (Langevin equation, fluctuation–dissipation theorem, spatial diffusion, Boltzmann’s H-theorem), Liouville and Klimontovich equations, Landau equation (derivation, elaboration, and H-theorem, and irreversibility), Markov processes and Fokker–Planck equation (derivations of the Fokker–Planck equation and a master equation), linear response and transport theory (linear Boltzmann equation, linear response theory of Kubo and Mori, relation of entropy production to electrical conductivity, transport relations and coefficients, normal mode solutions of the transport equations, sketch of a generalized Langevin equation method for transport theory), and an introduction to nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics.
This book is a collection of lecture notes on various topics in the area of stochastic control, stochastic differential games, and financial applications. It makes for an excellent resource for those who already have some familiarity with these topics, although as the author points out, it is not a polished textbook. If the reader is not well versed in stochastic processes and control theory this book may not be the best introduction since prerequisite knowledge of these topics is a must before diving into the material. On the other hand, the book contains a very useful section of notes at the end of each chapter describing references that can be used to get up to speed and to put the material into the wider context. In this respect, it can be used as a guide for those interested in navigating the various books and papers that are drawn upon. The book is divided into three parts: Stochastic Calculus Preliminaries, Stochastic Control, and Stochastic Differential Games. The underlying theory is developed in a systematic manner and many financial applications are scattered throughout the book.
These lectures, presented at the 2021 Les Houches Summer School on Dark Matter, provide an introduction to key methods and tools of indirect dark matter searches, as well as a status report on the field circa summer 2021. Topics covered include the possible effects of energy injection from dark matter on the early universe, methods to calculate both the expected energy distribution and spatial distribution of particles produced by dark matter interactions, an outline of theoretical models that predict diverse signals in indirect detection, and a discussion of current constraints and some claimed anomalies. These notes are intended as an introduction to indirect dark matter searches for graduate students, focusing primarily on intuition-building estimates and useful concepts and tools.
These lecture notes provide a self-contained introduction to Euler integrals, which are frequently encountered in applications. In particle physics, they arise as Feynman integrals or string amplitudes. Our four selected topics demonstrate the diverse mathematical techniques involved in the study of Euler integrals, including polyhedral geometry, very affine varieties, differential equations, and computational algebra.
These lecture notes, prepared for the 2024 XQCD PhD, provide an introduction to the analytic structure of an equation of state near a second-order phase transition and its most prominent landmark: the Yang-Lee edge singularity. In addition to discussing general properties, the notes review recent theoretical progress in locating the QCD critical point by tracking the trajectory of the Yang-Lee edge singularity.
Lecture roadmap: Definitions, explanation of shock wave, properties of a shock wave, relations to equation of state and quasistatic compression, calculations, measurements, and problems.
The presentation is composed of the slides used in various NEST lectures including: Interaction of Radiation with Matter, Biological and Health Effects of Radiation Exposure, Radionuclide Detection and Dose Assessment, Plutonium, Other Radionuclides Monitored by Bioassay and Case Studies, and, Counting Statistics.
Introduction to Chiral Perturbation Theory, pedagogical lecture
We introduce the gauge/gravity, or AdS/CFT, correspondence with an eye towards its application to strongly coupled systems. We provide an overview of the duality, including the AdS/CFT dictionary and holographic renormalization. We then discuss simple correlation functions in the context of renormalization group flow geometries, holographic thermodynamics and an application to the phase diagram of QCD, real-time correlators and the shear viscosity of strongly coupled field theories, holographic superconductors, and the application of holographic fermionic response to strange metals. These lectures were delivered at TASI 2017.
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are an appealing and well studied candidate for dark matter (DM) that arise in many extensions of the standard model. I will discuss where a WIMP sits in the catalogue of DM candidates, its origin as a thermal relic, and the various approaches available to discover it. The prototypical example of a WIMP is the neutralino of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). I will give an introduction to the formalism and phenomenology of supersymmetry and the MSSM, with emphasis on DM. These notes are the combination of lectures given at TASI 2018 and a Joint ICTP-Trieste/ICTP-SAIFR School.