The Russian Singing Concert will showcase the talents of students Luke Brown, Joseph Ison, Laura King, Lukas Spohn, Aphelion Delong-Grant, Sara Smith, Caroline Goodell, Nate Barker and Anabel Canedo. The group will be accompanied by pianist Juelin Zhao, a graduate student from UK School of Music.

The program will be presented at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8, in the Niles Gallery of the Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library. This event is free and open to the public.

The event will benefit both the students and audience. The Russian Singing Concert is an opportunity to hear the rich culture of Russian music and offer an appreciation for the students’ hard work over the course of the semester. The concert aims to unite the audience through the poetry of music and the music of poetry.

Dr. Ronald Garcia-Ruiz, MIT

Title: Radioactive Molecules are Dying to Reveal New Physics

Abstract: Rapid advances in the control and interrogation of individual atoms and molecules are opening new avenues for probing the properties of fundamental particles and their interactions. In particular, molecules containing heavy, radioactive nuclei with reflection-asymmetric shapes provide exceptional sensitivity to parity- and time-reversal-violating nuclear effects. Precision measurements in these systems therefore offer a powerful approach to addressing major open questions in fundamental physics, including the origin of the matter–antimatter asymmetry of the universe, the strong CP problem and the possible existence of physics beyond the Standard Model. 

In this colloquium, I will present recent results and future directions in precision studies of these exotic systems, with a focus on radium-containing molecules. I will discuss how such molecules are emerging as a compelling new frontier in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model.

Dr. Jim Sauls, LSU

Title: The Left Hand of the Electron in a Chiral Vacuum

Abstract: In 1957, parity violation by the weak force was demonstrated in experiments led by Chien-Shiung Wu on the asymmetry of electron currents emitted in the beta decay of polarized 60Co. The asymmetry reflects two broken symmetries that mirror reflection and time-reversal. 

The same year, Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer published their microscopic theory of superconductivity, and soon thereafter Anderson and Morel proposed that the ground-state of liquid 3He was possibly a BCS condensate of chiral p-wave Cooper pairs, exhibiting spontaneously broken mirror reflection and time-reversal symmetries. 

Indeed, the high-pressure phase of superfluid 3He, discovered in 1972, is the realization of the Anderson-Morel state.Definitive proof that 3He-A spontaneously breaks mirror and time-reversal symmetry, however, came 41 years later with the observation an anomalous Hall effect for electrons moving in 3He-A. I discuss the prediction, discovery and origin of the anomalous Hall current of electrons moving in a chiral vacuum.

Dr. Ryan MacLellan, University of Kentucky

Title: 

What will be the next surprise from neutrinos

Abstract:
Neutrinos are the last remaining pieces of the Standard Model of Particle Physics with unknown mass. The fact that they have mass at all has been the only new physics discovered in the Standard Model in generations. Although we do not know the scale of neutrino mass, there is strong evidence that it is sufficiently small that measuring it will be even more challenging than its discovery. The smallness of their mass begs the question: do neutrinos acquire mass through the same mechanism as all of the other, charged, elementary fermions? Neutrinos, being neutral fermions, are the only particles that can be Majorana fermions, which might naturally explain not only the smallness of their mass, but also help explain why the Universe is dominated by matter.

Neutrino-less double-beta decay provides both an "intense" source of potentially Majorana neutrinos and a likely non-negligible capacity to detect them. The process probes baryon-number minus lepton-number conservation, the Majorana nature of neutrinos and possibly the origin of neutrino masses. However, interesting lifetimes to probe already exceed 10^26 yr.  I will describe the nEXO experiment, a 5-tonne enriched Xenon experiment with sensitivity extending beyond 10^28 yr, or >100 times the current state of the art, as the project I have dedicated my research efforts to over the past 12-1 yr. Since the nEXO project has been indefinitely suspended by DOE, I will also introduce a novel program for the direct measurement of the neutrino mass scale using Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy. The project is called Project 8. Dr. Crawford and I hope our Department will contribute to Project 8 over the next decade or more and eventually to a measurement of the neutrino mass scale.