This award will provide participant support for early career scientists and graduate students to participate in the second CETUP* program that is planned to take place on July 10 - August1, 2012 in Lead, SD. The topics to be covered are at the forefront of research topics in particle and nuclear physics and will explore new physics beyond the Standard Model. The study of neutrino physics and dark matter is of high interest to particle and nuclear physicists and astrophysicists. The ongoing and proposed dark matter and neutrino experiments are expected to unveil the answers to critical questions asked by scientists for last few decades. Recent precise measurements of all the neutrino mixing angles necessitate a theoretical roadmap for the future. Understanding the nature of dark matter better would help to understand the composition of the cosmos better.
The scope of the 2012 summer CETUP* program will include the "Dark Matter" program followed by a three day interlude program (July 19-21) comprising of "Dark Matter, Neutrino Physics and Unification." Following that, there will be a week and a half long focused theory session on "Neutrino Physics and Unification" and a 3-day long Physics Working Group workshop of Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) (July 30 - August 1).
Among the Broader Impacts, understanding neutrino properties better could have significant implications in astrophysics and cosmology, and may offer solutions to the current puzzles such as the abundance of matter over antimatter in the Universe. Outreach efforts will aim to share the excitement of this research with K-12 students and general public. Selected CETUP* participants will give three public lectures that outline the importance of dark matter and neutrino research. Such presentations at a level comprehensible by the general public are important for developing public support for national investment in basic science. South Dakota Public Broadcasting will record and stream the lectures state wide as well as post it on their website for those who couldn't participate live. They also will be working with the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation to reach out to Native American students and include them in the educational activities at the CETUP* as well as organize an informal get together with the students and discuss their interests in science and possible future STEM career opportunities.
The Center for Theoretical Underground Physics and Related Areas (CETUP*) is intended to be the central collaboration point for long term, intermediate, and programmatic functions for physics and related fields that deal directly with the experimental work being conducted at the world's 20 plus underground laboratories. Our goal is to bring together people with different talents and skills to address the most exciting questions in physics, astrophysics, geosciences, and geomicrobiology. Many interesting scientific phenomena produce very weak signals in our detectors. Cosmic ray flux incident to the Earth's surface often overwhelms these tiny rates. In deep underground, the earth above filters much of this flux, enabling detection of even very feeble signals. The science that can be done best deep underground is very broad. It includes nucleon stability, particle dark matter, very long baseline studies of neutrino properties (the leptonic mixing matrix and possible CP violation in the lepton sector), astrophysics/cosmic rays (atmospheric neutrino oscillations, supernova neutrino detection) double beta decay, solar neutrinos, and low-energy accelerators for precision nuclear astrophysics cross sections. There is also broad interest in applications of low-background detection in areas ranging from fundamental and applied physics (synthesis of pure materials) to national security (test ban verification by isotope analysis). In the summer of 2012 a workshop was held bringing together around 60 experts in dark matter, grand unification theories as well as neutrino physics. All the talks took place at the Lead/Deadwood Middle School, near the Sanford Underground Research Facility. A three-week long summer program comprised of a 1.5 week-long focus session on current theoretical and experimental status of dark matter discussions and a 1.5 week session focusing on neutrino physics, nucleon decay, and unification. The latest status of theory and experiments were reviewed over detailed discussion sessions which made all the participants wanting to return for future CETUP* programs (talks are available at www.dsu.edu/research/cetup/2012.aspx). Many of these discussion sessions gave rise to a large number of papers as is evident from the 15+ publications with CETUP* preprint numbers for 2012 alone (list of preprints is available at www.dsu.edu/research/cetup/preprints2012.aspx). Also the AIP (American Institute of Physics) Proceedings titled CETUP*2012 – Workshop on Dark Matter, Unification and Neutrino Physics were published and are available to broad science community online (http://proceedings.aip.org/resource/2/apcpcs/1534/1?isAuthorized=no). The workshop also contributed to the training of young scientists (graduate students, postdocs, young faculty) who participated in the programs by interaction and collaboration with the experts in dark matter and neutrino physics. Special outreach efforts were undertaken to share the excitement of this research with K-12 students, undergraduate students, teachers and general public.
