PIKIMO 19: Fall 2025

Session

Regular Sessions

8 Nov 2025, 08:50

Tech L211 (Northwestern University Technological Institute)

11. Large Neutrino "Collider"

Keping Xie (Michigan State University)

08/11/2025, 09:00

We propose using current and future large-volume neutrino telescopes as ``Large Neutrino Colliders" (L$\nu$Cs) to explore TeV-scale physics beyond the Standard Model. Cosmic neutrinos with energies above 100 PeV colliding with nucleons in the detector reach center-of-mass energies beyond the 14 TeV limit of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Using recently predicted and measured high-energy and...

4. A $\nu$ look at the Sun: Probing the conditions of the solar core using $^8$B neutrinos

Ms Melanie Zaidel (Ohio State University)

08/11/2025, 09:15

In the coming age of precision neutrino physics, neutrinos from the Sun become robust probes of the conditions of the solar core. Here, we focus on $^8$B neutrinos, for which there are already high precision measurements by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and Super-Kamiokande. Using only basic physical principles and straightforward statistical tools, we estimate projected constraints on the...

5. Probing Neutrino Properties at Low and Medium Energies

Sam Carey (Wayne State University)

08/11/2025, 09:30

As neutrino experiments become more precise and explore a wide range of energies, studying how neutrinos interact with matter has become an important way to test the Standard Model and search for new physics. In this talk, I will present our work on neutrino interactions at both low (MeV) and medium (GeV) energy scales. At low energies, we consider coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering...

10. A Quantum Computational Determination of the Weak Mixing Angle in the Standard Model

Qiaofeng Liu (Northwestern University)

08/11/2025, 09:45

The weak mixing angle $s_W$ is a fundamental constant in the Standard Model (SM) and measured at the Z boson mass to be $\widehat{s}^2_W(m_Z) = 0.23129 \pm 0.00004$ in the $\overline{\text{MS}}$ renormalization scheme, where $m_Z=91.2$ GeV. On the other hand, non-stabilizerness - the magic - characterizes the computational advantage of a quantum system over classical computers. We consider the...

19. A Quantum Description of Axion Dark Matter Detection

Dhong Yeon Cheong (University of Chicago)

08/11/2025, 10:15

In this talk, I will present a unified quantum framework for axion dark matter detection. Drawing on a quantum-optics-inspired formalism, we describe realistic axion dark matter detection schemes through a density matrix and a corresponding quasi-probability distribution. We show that the intrinsically quantum nature of the dark matter field will remain unobservable with current or foreseeable...

3. Axion Production and Detection Using a Dual NMR-type Experiment

Fengwei Yang (University of Notre Dame)

08/11/2025, 10:30

Axions that couple to nuclear spins via the axial current interaction can be both produced and detected using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. In this scheme, nuclei driven by a real oscillating magnetic field in one device act as an axion source, which can drive NMR in a nearby spin-polarized sample interrogated with a sensitive magnetometer. The gradient of the generated...

6. Upper Bound on Parity Breaking Scale for Doublet WIMP Dark Matter

Matthew Baldwin

08/11/2025, 10:45

We consider weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter in a Parity solution to the strong CP problem. The WIMP phenomenology can be drastically affected by the presence of Parity partners of the WIMP and electroweak gauge bosons. We focus on a Parity extension of $SU(2)_L$ doublet fermion dark matter, identify the viable parameter space, and derive the predictions of the theory. We...

7. Stringent Constraints on Gravitational Wave Signatures of Dark Electromagnetism

Ian Harris

08/11/2025, 11:00

Gravitational wave interferometers have studied compact object mergers and solidified our understanding of strong gravity. Their increasing precision raises the possibility of detecting new physics, especially in a neutron star binary system that contains dark hidden-sector particles. In particular, a new vector force between binary constituents, giving rise to dark electromagnetic phenomena,...

16. Running with Radiative Corrections in Deep Inelastic Scattering

Justin Cammarota (University of Kentucky)

08/11/2025, 15:15

The factorization theorem plays an important role in the analysis of high energy quantum chromodynamic (QCD) processes, separating the nonperturbative hadronic interaction into the universal parton distribution functions (PDFs) and fragmentation functions (FFs) and the process-dependent interactions into short distance perturbative calculations, with any interference power suppressed. With a...

15. A baryon and lepton number violation model testable at the LHC

Tong Ou

08/11/2025, 15:30

Proton decay experiments typically constrain baryon number violation to the scale of grand unified theories. From a phenomenological point of view, this makes direct probing of the associated new resonances, such as the X and Y bosons, out of reach for even the most optimistic future experiments. It has, however, been known that certain specific patterns of baryon and lepton number violation...

20. Autonomous New-Physics Discovery from Foundational Embeddings of SMEFT

Brandon Kriesten (Argonne National Laboratory)

08/11/2025, 15:45

Representing hadronic parton distribution functions (PDFs) through flexible, high-fidelity parameterizations remains a long-standing goal of particle physics phenomenology. One crucial goal is to quantitatively connect experiments’ sensitivity to underlying theory assumptions, including a broad array of BSM and SMEFT scenarios, to the properties of the PDFs’ flavor and x-dependence. We explore...

13. QED at the precision frontier: accounting for cavity shifts to $(g-2)_e$

Hannah Day

08/11/2025, 16:00

The anomalous magnetic dipole moment ($g-2$) of the electron is one of the most precisely measured quantities in the world. Experimentally, an electron is trapped in a cylindrical cavity, and the measured value of $g-2$ receives a correction due to the cavity boundary that must be subtracted off. We calculate the cavity correction using a quantum mechanical formulation and demonstrate that it...

21. Constraining General Light Massive Relics with the CMB

David Imig (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

08/11/2025, 16:30

Cosmic light massive relics (LiMRs) exhibit unique redshifting behavior, contributing to the radiation content of the early universe while relativistic but to the matter content of the late universe when non-relativistic. While these asymptotic abundances of a LiMR species, parametrized by its radiation contribution $\Delta N_\mathrm{eff}$ and its non-relativistic transition redshift...

12. AXIS Can Access Dark Matter Decays with the Longest Lifetimes

Inci Karaaslan (University of Chicago (US))

08/11/2025, 16:45

As one of NASA’s proposed future Astrophysics Probe missions, the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) is designed to improve on the sensitivity and spatial resolution of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The low-background, arcsecond imaging that AXIS will deliver over a broad energy range can probe a new region of parameter space for exploring decaying dark matter candidates, such as...

17. Dynamical Solution to the Eta Problem in Spectator Field Models

Sana Elgamal (University of Chicago)

08/11/2025, 17:00

We study a class of spectator field models that addresses the eta problem while providing a natural explanation for the observed slight deviation of the spectrum of curvature perturbations from scale-invariance. In particular, we analyze the effects of quantum corrections on the quadratic potential of the spectator field given by its gravitational coupling to the Ricci scalar and the inflaton...

24. Generalized Entanglement Measures in Higher Dimensional Quantum Systems

Melinda Yuan (Northwestern University)

08/11/2025, 17:15

Quantum entanglement is well-understood in a two-qubit system. Concurrence is a scalar quantity that measures the degree of entanglement between two qubits. For higher dimensional systems, however, there has yet to be an established entanglement measure. This talk will attempt to generalize the idea of concurrence to qutrit, qudit, and multi-partite systems. In the qutrit case, we examine a...

18. Searching Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Landscape From Inflated String-Wall Network Across Frequency Bands

Yunjia Bao (University of Chicago)

08/11/2025, 17:35

Gravitational wave (GW) astrophysics is entering a multi-band era with upcoming GW detectors, enabling detailed mapping of the stochastic GW background across vast frequencies. We highlight this potential via a new physics scenario: hybrid topological defects from a two-step phase transition separated by inflation. We develop a general pipeline to analyze experimental exclusions and apply it...

9. Constraining the Coexistence of Freeze-in Dark Matter and Primordial Black Holes

Sagnik Mukherjee (University of Illinois Chicago)

08/11/2025, 17:50

Particle dark matter and primordial black holes (PBH) might coexist with appreciable cosmic abundances, with both contributing to the observed dark matter density $\Omega_{\rm DM}$. Large populations of PBH (with $\Omega_{\rm PBH} \sim \Omega_{\rm DM}$) are tightly constrained for PBH heavier than $10^{−11} M_{\odot}$. However, large fractional abundances with $f_{\rm PBH} \simeq \Omega_{\rm...

8. The Bearable Inhomogeneity of the Baryon Asymmetry

Hengameh Bagherian

08/11/2025, 18:05

We study the implications of precision measurements of light-element abundances, in combination with the Cosmic Microwave Background, for scenarios of physics beyond the Standard Model that generate large inhomogeneities in the baryon-to-photon ratio. We show that precision Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) places strong constraints on any mechanism that produces large-scale inhomogeneities at...

2. Widen the Resonance: Probing a New Regime of Neutrino Self-Interactions with Astrophysical Neutrinos

Bei Zhou (Fermilab)

Neutrino self-interactions beyond the standard model have profound implications in astrophysics and cosmology. In this work, we study an uncharted scenario in which one of the three neutrino species has a mass smaller than the temperature of the cosmic neutrino background. This results in a relativistic component that significantly broadens the absorption feature on the astrophysical neutrino...