[Astro] [CAPT] CAPT Weekly Bulletin (w/c 27-10-25)

[Ella Batchelor (staff)]

Monday 27th October at 3pm, A113 CAPT – Theoretical Physics Student Seminar

Adam Shaw

Hamiltonian analysis of classical gauge fixing

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Tuesdays at 11am, CAPT Foyer – Astro Coffee



Tuesday 28th October at 1pm, A113 CAPT – Particle Cosmology and Gravity Seminar

Jack Shergold (Liverpool)

Atomic and molecular transitions for neutrino and light dark matter detection


The detection of light, cold, and weakly interacting relics from the early universe is an extraordinary challenge. In this talk, I will discuss the possibility of using atoms and molecules as relic neutrino and dark matter detectors. I will begin with a brief introduction to generalised atomic interactions, and then discuss our
recent progress: CINCO, an automated tool for the computation of atomic transition amplitudes, and pair absorption, which is particularly sensitive to light, bosonic dark matter. Time allowing, I will then move on to discuss our current work using molecules and crystals.

Link to join:  https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OGM3OTk5NzQtZWEwZS00ZmUyLTk3MGUtZjFhY2M5OTU2MjI1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2267bda7ee-fd80-41ef-ac91-358418290a1e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22f3250584-4b5f-48fa-a897-08e77f2246b7%22%7d
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Wednesday 29th October at 11am, A113 CAPT – CAPT Coding Club



Wednesday 29th October at 3pm, B1 Physics – School Colloquium

Oliver Buchmueller (Imperial)

Exploring the Universe with Quantum Technology: A New Frontier in Fundamental Physics



Recent advances in cold-atom quantum technology are opening an unprecedented window on the Universe.  Professor Oliver Buchmueller will show how these sensors are now addressing some of the most fundamental questions in physics. This technology enables ultra-sensitive gravitational-wave detection in the mid-frequency band, filling the crucial gap between LISA and ground-based observatories (LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, INDIGO, Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer), while advancing multiple frontiers in fundamental science. Applications include dark-matter searches, studies of intermediate-mass black-hole mergers, and investigations of early-universe cosmology.


The talk will introduce the UK’s Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION) and the newly established Terrestrial Very-Long-Baseline Atom Interferometry (TVLBAI) proto-collaboratio - an international initiative targeting kilometre-scale detectors by the mid-2030s. Combined with proposed space missions such as AEDGE, these efforts herald a new scientific era in which quantum instruments probe gravitational phenomena, dark matter, cosmology, and the architecture of space-time itself.

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Thursday 30th October at 1pm, A113 CAPT – Astronomy Lunch Talk

Tutku Kolcu
Tracing the invisible: The shape of cluster haloes revealed by intracluster light



 The intracluster light (ICL) provides a powerful means of tracing the diffuse stellar component of galaxy clusters and directly probing the shapes of their underlying dark matter haloes. The morphology of the ICL—its ellipticity, orientation, and radial variation—encodes valuable information about cluster assembly, dynamical state, and the coupling between baryons and dark matter. However, its extremely faint nature has long hindered systematic studies of structure on cluster scales. With the advent of high-resolution, wide-field imaging from Euclid, we can now measure ICL shapes with unprecedented precision. In this talk, I will present results from Euclid’s Quick Release (Q1), where we quantify ICL ellipticity and position angle for nearly 200 clusters between redshifts 0.1 and 0.8 across five photometric bands (VIS, Y, J, H, and coadded YJH). We find consistent shape parameters across filters, with the H band tracing the ICL to the largest cluster-centric distances. The ICL becomes progressively more elongated with radius, reaching ellipticities consistent with those inferred from weak and strong lensing studies, and showing alignment with both the brightest cluster galaxy and the member galaxy distribution. Comparisons with Hydrangea hydrodynamical simulations reveal similar, though slightly rounder, ICL shapes. These results establish the ICL as a robust luminous tracer of halo structure and orientation.


Thursday 30th October at 3pm, A113 CAPT – Particle Cosmology Journal Club
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Friday 31st October at 11am, A113 CAPT – Gravity Laboratory Journal Club

Adrià Delhom and Andrea Calcinari (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

A relational description of cosmological spacetimes as hydrodynamic systems



In this talk we introduce a new framework called "hydrodynamics on minisuperspace" where cosmology is viewed as an effective, coarse-grained description of an underlying fundamental quantum theory. After giving some motivation, we present a map between hydrodynamics and standard cosmology, which is based on dynamical equations and symmetry arguments. Such a map can only be achieved by means of relational observables defined with no reference to a spacetime manifold (i.e., on minisuperspace). We also comment on the Group Field Theory (GFT) approach to quantum gravity, which realises precisely these ideas by describing the emergence of spacetime by a “condensate” of more fundamental degrees of freedom. We conclude mentioning recent results that describe Bogolyubov excitations in GFT and hence beyond mean-field corrections.

Fridays at 4pm, CAPT Foyer – CAPT Cakes
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If you have any events/visitors you would like included in next week’s bulletin, please let me know.

Best wishes

Ella

Ella Batchelor (she/her)
Administrator

School of Physics & Astronomy

University of Nottingham
A112a Centre for Astronomy & Particle Theory
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

+44 (0) 115 74 86778 |  nottingham.ac.uk<http://nottingham.ac.uk/>

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