Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA

Title: Using the Metallicity of Simulated Galaxies to Understand Galaxy Evolution

Abstract: Numerical simulations are an invaluable tool for understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Yet, the current generation of simulations suffers from significant modeling uncertainties, rooted in divergent predictions from different codes using similar prescriptions and in a lack systematic comparisons between qualitatively different models. In this talk, I will highlight the oftentimes underappreciated differences between popular cosmological simulations (e.g., IllustrisTNG, EAGLE, FIRE) through examining their metal content. Metals serve as powerful observational tracers of the galactic baryon cycle and are highly sensitive to the details of feedback physics. I will show that even for nominally similar simulation models (e.g., IllustrisTNG and EAGLE), the overall metal budget of the galaxy can be significantly different. Moreover, distinct physical implementations (e.g., IllustrisTNG and FIRE) make very different predictions for the spatial distribution of metals within galaxies. Together, these predictions provide a theoretical framework through which we can leverage the wealth of observational data on metals to gain deeper insight into the processes driving galaxy evolution.

Zoom Link: https://uky.zoom.us/j/82910452708

Title: Where the hot universe meets the energetic universe

Abstract: The hot circumgalactic medium (CGM), a reservoir of missing baryons, metals and energy, plays a key role in our understanding of galaxy evolution. Extraordinary observational challenges, however, make the hot CGM one of the least understood components of galaxies. 

Studying the hot CGM was not the objective of current X-ray or mm facilities during the design phase. As an excellent byproduct, however, observing the hot CGM has emerged as a promising field over the last two decades, coming at the forefront of priority science goals for the current and upcoming decades. 

I will discuss three snippets of our recent efforts to detect and characterize the hot CGM: 

1. X-raying the Milky Way: Investigating thermal and chemical anomalies.
2. Is CGM detectable? Conducting deep searches in individual external galaxies using X-ray,
3. Test for self-similarity: stacking thousands of galaxies in mm (Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect). 

I will highlight how our findings provide insights into the impact of galactic feedback on the hot CGM, establish our confidence in leveraging current telescopes to inform theoretical simulations and set a benchmark for designing experiments with next-generation X-ray and mm facilities.

Gauge theories describe the fundamental interactions, but their complexity makes questions involving real-time dynamics beyond the reach of classical computation. Quantum computers open a new path by naturally representing quantum fields and evolving them in real time thus circumventing for example the sign problem that limits classical Monte Carlo methods. In this talk, we will discuss the challenges and recent progress in encoding and simulating Gauge theories on fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Title: Better Together: Combining the Strengths of Rubin, LS4 and Euclid for Time-domain Science and Cosmology

Abstract: We have entered an exciting decade for survey science with such space-based surveys as Euclid and such ground-based surveys as LSST and LS4 providing overlapping imaging datasets across the optical and IR.  LSST will identify thousands of tidal disruption events (TDEs) and millions of AGN and supernovae, including hundreds of gravitationally lensed supernovae (gLSNe) from which we can measure the Hubble Constant. I will discuss how joint analysis of ground and space-based data via multi-resolution forward modeling methods will enable us to search for TDEs from non-nuclear massive black holes, undertake time delay cosmography with populations of gLSNe and study the environments of supernovae and dwarf galaxy AGN.

NB: non-standard time!

Title: Symmetry-weighted ensemble averaging from TQFT gravity

Abstract: In a recently proposed framework of TQFT gravity (2310.13044, 2405.20366) -- a toy model of AdS3 gravity -- a bulk 3d TQFT summed over all topologies is shown to be dual to a unitary ensemble of boundary 2d CFTs. I will show that the CFTs in this ensemble are weighted by the inverse of the order of their symmetry group (relative to the categorical symmetry provided by the bulk TQFT as a SymTFT). Mathematically, this is the natural measure over the groupoid of the TQFT Lagrangian algebras that construct the CFTs, and the holographic duality then provides a generalization of the Siegel-Weil formula beyond averaging over bosonic lattice-CFTs. I will also discuss some examples for rational CFTs as well as implications to noncompact TQFTs and pure gravity.