Mainz-Frankfurt CosmoCoffee 2026

Tuesday 21 Apr 2026, 08:00 → 21:55 Europe/Berlin

Faculty Club (FIAS, Campus Riedberg, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main)

Laura Sagunski, Julia Harz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), Daniel Schmitt (Goethe University, Frankfurt), Pedro Schwaller, Carlos Tamarit (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz), Christopher Gerlach (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

We are happy to announce that the fifth Mainz-Frankfurt-CosmoCoffee workshop will take place on April 21st, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Frankfurt a.M.

The goal of the Mainz-Frankfurt-CosmoCoffee is to bring together the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Goethe University Frankfurt working on cosmology and enhance our current and future exchange. 
The program will include a plenary talk by Kim Berghaus (KIT) and three sessions of shorter contributed talks.

We will close the workshop with a common dinner at 6.00 pm. We will announce the restaurant once we have confirmation.

 
For the registration for our Mainz-Frankfurt-Münster CosmoCoffee workshop, please sign up until 10th April 2026 at 11.59 pm.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there! 

09:30 → 10:00 Coffee and Snacks

10:00 → 10:05 Welcome

Speaker: Daniel Schmitt (Goethe University, Frankfurt)

10:05 → 10:25 Proto-Neutron Stars with Color Superconductivity

Speaker: Selina Kunkel (Goethe University Frankfurt)

10:30 → 10:50 Neutron Stars in the Presence of Dark Matter

Speaker: Sarah Louisa Pitz (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)

10:55 → 11:15 High-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars

Speaker: Katarina Bleau (Queen's University)

11:15 → 11:45 Break

11:45 → 12:05 Scalar-Induced Gravitational Waves from Thermal Inflation in Supercooled Cosmic Phase Transitions

Speaker: Tamara Caldas Cifuentes (Goethe University Frankfurt)

12:10 → 12:30 Phase Transition Nucleation Rates

Speaker: Judit Rodríguez (JGU Mainz)

12:30 → 13:30 Lunch Break

13:30 → 14:00 Coffee

14:00 → 15:00 The strong force could have heated the Universe’s first moment

In a recent breakthrough we showed that the strong nuclear force of the Standard Model may have generated the heat of the hot Big Bang itself. It is widely believed that cosmic inflation, the era of accelerated expansion in the infant universe, occurred while the cosmos was cold and empty, requiring some unknown process to subsequently generate the hot plasma we observe. Our work demonstrates that the early universe may have instead been immersed in a hot bath of known elementary particles during inflation. The proposed mechanism couples gluons, which mediate the strong force in atomic nuclei, with an axion-like particle that drives inflation. This coupling induces friction that provides the energy to heat the inflating universe. In this talk, I will show that “warm inflation” (a hypothesis first proposed in 1995) is viable using Standard Model particles and yields testable predictions for upcoming observations. Implications for strong CP and dark matter will be discussed.

Speaker: Kim Berghaus

15:00 → 15:30 Break

15:30 → 15:50 Environmental Imprints of Supermassive Black Hole Binaries on the Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Background

Speaker: Matthias Daniel (Goethe University Frankfurt)

15:50 → 16:10 Cosmic Footprints of Secluded Dark Matter

Speaker: Sabrina Saul (JGU Mainz)

16:10 → 16:30 Exclusion of Domain Wall Network Scenarios due to the Incompatibility of the Generated Baryon–Photon Isocurvature with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Speaker: Diego Fortini (JGU Mainz)

16:30 → 16:50 Low-Scale Leptogenesis

Speaker: Laura Lünenbürger (JGU Mainz)

18:00 → 20:00 Common dinner