Nobel Symposium Research Articles

Some progress & challenges for the direct-detection of sub-GeV dark matter

In this contribution to the special issue on the Nobel Symposium on Dark Matter (NS 182), I review some recent theoretical and experimental progress, as well as some current challenges, in searching for dark matter particles below the proton mass with low-threshold direct-detection experiments. We now have several detection concepts for probing sub-GeV dark matter, and several technologies exist that can measure the small signals that such particles would produce in the detector. We have also made significant progress in calculating the dark matter interaction rates in crystals. In addition, we have discovered new signals for dark matter, and I will focus on the boosted dark matter component that is produced in the Sun. I will also discuss a recent (unsuccessful) attempt to probe, for the first time, the ‘Migdal’ effect in liquid xenon in a neutron scattering experiment. Moreover, I will highlight the discovery of several novel experimental backgrounds that mimic the expected dark matter signal; however, other backgrounds remain to be understood. Finally, I will discuss an exciting new detector concept, the dual-sided Charge-Coupled Device (CCD).

LUX, ZEPLIN and LUX-ZEPLIN: Developments in liquid xenon detectors and the search for WIMP dark matter

The search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) remains one of the enduring scientific and technical challenges in physics despite four decades of research. A discovery would have broad implications for particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Over the last 15 years, liquid xenon time projection chambers have been on the forefront of this search, starting with detector masses on the 10-kg scale and now reaching the 10-tonne scale. Advances in a number of technical areas across xenon-detector collaborations worldwide, along with progress in related techniques in low-background and liquid noble detectors, have led to significant and steady improvements in sensitivity. In this contribution to Nobel Symposium 182, I highlight several of the contributions made by the LUX, ZEPLIN, and LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) collaborations, and members thereof. I also discuss briefly the status of the currently-operating and world-leading LZ experiment.

What makes a discovery?

In this contribution to the proceedings of the 182nd Nobel Symposium, I reflect on the concept of “discovery” as it is used by physicists and astronomers. In particular, I comment on how the scientific community distinguishes discoveries from propositions that are supported only by lesser forms of evidence, emphasizing the social nature of this process and remarking on the subjective factors that go into making such judgments. I advocate for an approach that is intentionally Bayesian in nature, in which individuals are encouraged to evaluate and publicly state their priors and to update them systematically. I close by applying these practices to the case example of the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess.

Forty years of dark matter searches

In this introduction to the 2023 Nobel Symposium on Dark Matter, I attempt to summarize the situation of the laboratory searches for dark matter and the lessons learned over the forty years of this exciting enterprise.

Particle dark matter versus modified gravity

There are at least two possible solutions to the so-called Dark Matter problem. One is to introduce new particles and another one is to modify gravity. In these proceedings of the 182nd Nobel Symposium on dark matter, I question the particle dark matter hypothesis in light of new developments in the gravity sector. To this effect, I review how the CMB anisotropies and the details of structure formation have been used to test the dark matter microscopic properties. I explain how this has led to challenge the Hut-Lee & Weinberg argument and the introduction of light (thermal) dark matter scenarios and dark photon/light Z′. These developments have ultimately paved the way for a comprehensive exploration of the entire dark matter mass spectrum. I then discuss a new theory of modified gravity that appears to be a novel alternative to particle dark matter and ask the question: how to distinguish the two? I expect this question to become extremely relevant in absence of dark matter particle detection in Earth based experiments and in presence of ambiguous astrophysical and cosmological signals.

MATERIALS OF NOBEL SYMPOSIUM 175: PRECISION MEDICINE TRANSFORMS HEALTHCARE: A NEW TRAJECTORY FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION SEPTEMBER 20-22, 2023, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.

Nobel Symposium 175 was organized by Professor Richard Rosenquist Brandell of Karolinska Institutet and was supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The focus of the symposium was a discussion on the development of precision medicine in infectious and rare diseases, cancer, and complex diseases. Presentations and discussions concerned new technologies, bioinformatics, and new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches based on findings in basic research. Organization of precision medicine models and their implementation in medical practice at the national and international levels were also on the agenda. 29 scientists from different fields of medicine presented their work during a three-day exciting trip into the future of patient' care. Panel discussions shed light on the development of precision medicine for better treatment of patients.

'Super Bowl of the world conference circuit'? A network approach to high-level science and policy conferencing.

Elite conferences, such as the Nobel Symposia organized by the Nobel Foundation since 1965, have often put a premium on the uninhibited exchange of ideas rather than the broad exchange of information. Nobel Symposium 14, The Place of Value in a World of Fact (1969), combined this ethos with the ambition to engage with 'world problems' that were thought by many at the time to constitute a global crisis. This paper examines the relationship between the Nobel Foundation's ideal of scientific neutrality/objectivity and the 'neutral activism' in Swedish 1960s foreign policy. Furthermore, it investigates the social networking that preceded and followed the symposium, arguing that these processes were more important for the symposium's impact than the actual meeting. They formed channels through which it was able to influence other larger meetings, like the 1972 UN conference on the human environment, and contributed to the creation of international organizations, most importantly the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study. This suggests that the common historiographic focus on science meetings as events should be complemented by analytical perspectives that also view them as processes.

Conference Report on the Nobel Symposium #168 “Visions of bio-inorganic chemistry: Metals and the molecules of life” held in Lejondal Castle, Sweden, from May 29 – June 1 2022

There is usually only one Nobel Symposium per discipline and year, but COVID has also had an effect on this rule. Initially planned to take place in 2020, this Nobel Symposium lined up a unique group of speakers and just about the same number of observers, as well as three members of the scientific press, all by invitation.

Howard Rachlin (1935-2021).

Memorializes Howard Rachlin (1935-2021). Rachlin was born to Irving and Gussie Kugler Rachlin in New York City on March 10, 1935. He died 86 years later of cancer, leaving his wife Nahid, daughter Leila, and grandson Ethan. He received numerous recognitions: the Med Associates Distinguished Contributions to Basic Behavioral Research award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association, the Impact of Science on Application award from the Association for Behavior Analysis, a James McKeen Cattell Fellowship, continuous funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Mental Health (from which he received the MERIT award), visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and invited speaker at the Nobel symposium on Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Of himself Rachlin wrote: "He obtained a bachelor of mechanical engineering degree from Cooper Union in New York City [1957], where he learned to treat all scientific and practical questions as asking for answers rather than for self-expression; masters in philosophy and psychology from The New School of Social Research in New York City [1962], where he learned that the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts; and a PhD from Harvard University [1965], where B. F. Skinner and Richard Herrnstein taught him how to be a behaviorist." After teaching at Harvard, he joined Stony Brook University in New York in 1969, rising to the position of Distinguished Research Professor. Rachlin studied choice and decision-making; he was one of the founders of behavioral economics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Nuclear Data Sheets for A=266,270,274,278,282,286,290,294,298

Nuclear Data Sheets for A=266,270,274,278,282,286,290,294,298

Nuclear Data Sheets for A=268,272,276,280,284,288,292

Spectroscopic information such as production, identification, half-lives, decay modes and possible excited states for experimentally known nuclides of mass numbers 268, 272, 276, 280, 284, 288, and 292 are presented together with the recommended values, superseding information and data in the previous ENSDF and NDS evaluation by 2005Gu33. No nuclides have yet been identified for A=296 and 300. In the last 14 years, large amounts of new and definitive data on the superheavy nuclides (SHN) have become available, thus changing almost entirely the landscape of nuclear data in this mass region, as also indicated by a number of recent review articles: 2017Og01, 2016Ho09, 2016Ho06 (for fission barriers), 2016Fo10, 2015Og05, 2015Og07, and 2013Th02. See 2003Ka71 and 2001Ka70 for IUPAC technical discussions about the discovery of Z=111 (Rg) and 2009Ba62 for discovery of Z=112(Cn), 2011Ba54 for discovery of Z=114 (Fl) and Z=116 (Lv) and 2016Ka49 for discovery of Z=113 (Nh) and Z=115 (Mc). A special issue of Nuclear Physics A444 (2015) is devoted to research on superheavy elements (SHE) with 27 articles. In particular, see article by 2015Ko20 on mass spectrometric searches for superheavy elements in terrestrial matter. See also Proceedings of Nobel Symposium NS160 ‘Chemistry and Physics of Heavy and Superheavy Elements’ published in Eur. Phys. Jour. Web of Conferences 131 (2016), in particular 2016UtZZ, 2016DmZZ and 2016HoZY.A=268: 268Db, 268Hs and 268Mt are the only experimentally identified nuclides with A=268.A=272: 272Bh and 272Rg are the only experimentally identified nuclides with A=272. A tentative level scheme for 272Bh has been proposed from the decay of 276Mt. Search for 272Ds in 235U(40Ar,3n),E=5.1-5.4 MeV/nucleon reaction and subsequent α decays at GSI (1990Sc11) proved negative with σ<0.8nb.A=276: 276Mt is the only experimentally identified nuclide with A=276. A tentative level scheme has been proposed for this nuclide.A=280: 280Rg is the only experimentally identified nuclide with A=280. A tentative evidence is reported (2017Ka66) for 280Ds, based on one possible α-α-α correlated event at RIKEN.A=284: 284Cn, 284Nh and 284Fl are the only experimentally identified nuclides with A=284. First measurement of mass/charge (A/q) ratio has been made by 2018Ga34, resulting in the determination of A=284 for 284Nh.A=288: 288Fl and 288Mc are the only experimentally identified nuclides with A=288. Two independent experiments, first by Dubna-Livermore-ORNL collaboration using DGFRS at FLNR-JINR-Dubna (2004Og07,2004Og12), and the second at GSI using TASCA (2010Du06,2011Ga19) have confirmed the existence of 288Fl and 288Mc; and a third experiment at LBNL-Berkeley using BGS (2015Ga24) further confirmed the existence of 288Mc. Chemistry-related experiments for 288Fl have been reported by 2014Ya33 and 2010Ei01. First measurement of mass/charge (A/q) ratio has been made by 2018Ga34, resulting in the determination of A=288 for 288Mc. Search for 288Ds in natural Pt, Pb and Bi samples (2011De21) using accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) proved negative, with extremely low upper limits established.A=292: 292Lv is the only experimentally identified nuclide with A=292. Two independent experiments, one by Dubna-Livermore collaboration (2004Og12,2004OgZZ), and the other at GSI-SHIP facility (2012Ho12) confirm the identification of 292Lv, with the assignment of ten correlated events composed of Evaporation Residues (EVR)-α1-α2-SF correlated decay chains. Search for 292Rg in natural gold materials (2011De03), and for 292Ds and 292Fl in natural Pt, Pb and Bi samples (2011De21) using accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) proved negative, with extremely low upper limits established. 2010Ma03 proposed the existence of a very long-lived isomer in 122292 in their search of superheavy elements in natural Th sample using inductively-coupled plasma sector field mass spectroscopy, and interpreted the observed events as due to high-spin isomers of superdeformed or hyperdeformed character. This claim, however, for other nuclides in the superheavy element region has not been verified, for example in the AMS studies of natural samples such as Pt, Os, Au, Pb and Bi by 2011De21 and 2011De03. See also the publications of the Joint Working Party (JWP) of the IUPAC-IUPAP with critical appraisal of studies dealing with search of superheavy elements in natural samples. Specifically, for A=292, 2011De21 and 2011De21, using AMS technique, found no evidence for the existence of 292Ds, 292Rg and 292Fl in natural Pt, Pb, Bi and Au samples. See also replies to above critiques by 2009Ma19, Marinov et al., arXiv:0909.1057 (2009), and 2004MaZSA=296: Search for 296Rg in natural gold materials (2011De03), and for 296Fl and 296Mc in natural Pt, Pb and Bi samples (2011De21) using accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) proved negative, with extremely low upper limits established. See 2016DuZX for future prospects of discovery of elements beyond Z=118. There are no data tables for A=296.A=300: Search for 300Mc in natural Pt, Pb and Bi samples (2011De21) using accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) proved negative, with extremely low upper limits established. There are no data tables for A=300.

Involvement of NMDA Receptors in Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Mice

Involvement of NMDA Receptors in Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Mice

Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research

first_page settings Order Article Reprints Font Type: Arial Georgia Verdana Font Size: Aa Aa Aa Line Spacing:    Column Width:    Background: Open AccessMeeting Report Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research by Mats Larsson Department of Physics, AlbaNova University Center, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91, Sweden Appl. Sci. 2017, 7(4), 408; https://doi.org/10.3390/app7040408 Received: 5 April 2017 / Revised: 17 April 2017 / Accepted: 17 April 2017 / Published: 18 April 2017 (This article belongs to the Special Issue X-Ray Free-Electron Laser) Download Download PDF Download PDF with Cover Download XML Versions Notes Abstract: This meeting report describes the Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research, which was organized in Sigtuna, Sweden, 14–18 June 2015. Keywords: free electron laser; X-rays; Nobel Symposia 1. IntroductionThe Nobel Foundation initiated Nobel Symposia in 1965. According to the Nobel Symposia Instructions, “The symposium should be devoted to scientific or scholarly disciplines related to the Nobel Prize areas.” Before a symposium is approved, the Nobel Committees are consulted. Two characteristics of a Nobel Symposium is a limited number of participants (30–40) and a chance for a limited number of younger researchers to follow the symposium as observers. The local symposium committee, in the present case consisting of Mats Larsson, Ingolf Lindau, and Joseph Nordgren, all members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, is requested to have an international committee to assist in composing the scientific programme. The international committee consisted of Massimo Altarelli (European XFEL), Nora Berrah (UConn), John Galayda (SLAC), and Jon Marangos (Imperial College London).The Nobel Symposium took place at Sigtuna outside Stockholm between 14 and 18 June 2015. 2. Aim and Scope and PresentationsThe programme was divided into seven areas: atomic and molecular optical physics (AMO), life science, matter at extreme conditions, time-resolved phenomena, condensed matter physics, nonlinear processes, and accelerator physics. Each speaker was allotted an hour including questions, and the discussions were lively!The main focus was of course on the impressive scientific development of X-ray free electron lasers (FELs), but there were also a few talks devoted to long wavelength FELs. The full programme including links to the talks as PDF files is available here: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=4905. 3. ConclusionsThe invited speakers provide a very good overview of the cutting edge research on free electron lasers, related theory work, and both their history and their future.As a curiosity, it can be mentioned that the conference photo displayed on the symposium webpage was initiated by the guest editor of this volume, Kiyoshi Ueda, who was also invited to speak at the symposium.For several participants, this was the first time they had the opportunity to meet and hear the inventor of the free electron laser, John Madey, who delivered the keynote address Sadly, this was also the last time most of the participants met him; John Madey passed away just over a year after the symposium, on 5 July 2016. AcknowledgmentsThe Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research was Number 158 of all Symposia since the start in 1965. It was financially supported by the Nobel Foundation and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The FEL consortium between Stockholm University, Uppsala University, and the Royal Institute of Technology supported the participation of about 30 younger researchers, and observers from Belarus and Ukraine.Conflicts of InterestThe author declares no conflict of interest. © 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Share and Cite MDPI and ACS Style Larsson, M. Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research. Appl. Sci. 2017, 7, 408. https://doi.org/10.3390/app7040408 AMA Style Larsson M. Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research. Applied Sciences. 2017; 7(4):408. https://doi.org/10.3390/app7040408 Chicago/Turabian Style Larsson, Mats. 2017. "Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research" Applied Sciences 7, no. 4: 408. https://doi.org/10.3390/app7040408 Find Other Styles Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here. Article Metrics No No Article Access Statistics For more information on the journal statistics, click here. Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view.

John Michael Julius Madey

The inventor of the free-electron laser (FEL), John Michael Julius Madey, died of lung cancer on 5 July 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He left an indelible mark on the international accelerator community. John Michael Julius Madey UNIV OF HAWAII AT MANOA/PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY DEPTPPT|High resolutionJohn was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on 28 February 1943. In 1946 he and his family moved to a new house in Clark, where John grew up. His father owned an auto repair shop and instructed him and his older brother Jules in basic machine-shop skills. When John was 11, he and Jules studied together for their ham radio licenses from the Federal Communications Commission and provided morale communications for US Navy crewmen and civilian scientists stationed in Antarctica and their loved ones back home.John’s increasing fascination with the vacuum tubes used in the transmitters led him to learn everything there was to know about vacuum-tube technology. He was an avid builder of his own ham equipment, and the skills he developed served him well in his physics career. Howard Schrader, the brother of John’s next-door neighbor, owned one of the largest collections of vacuum tubes in the world. After hearing about the Madey brothers’ enthusiasm for the technology, Schrader, who was Princeton University’s official photographer, introduced them to John Wheeler and other faculty members.In 1960 John went to Caltech, where he received a BS in physics in 1964 and an MS in quantum electronics in 1965. While there he became deeply interested in whether the transition rate for bremsstrahlung could be amplified through stimulated emission. That curiosity continued when he went to Stanford University, where he earned a PhD in 1970 under the supervision of William Fairbank and conceived his most important invention: the FEL. Its bunched electron beam would pass through a periodic magnetic structure to stimulate the emission of light. In 1976, while working at Stanford’s High Energy Physics Laboratory, John and his team succeeded in demonstrating the FEL principle; they used a 24 MeV electron beam and a 5-meter-long wiggler magnet to amplify the beam from a carbon dioxide laser. By 1978 they had added mirrors to the system and increased the electron energy to 43 MeV, which allowed laser oscillations at a wavelength of 3.5 μm in the near-IR part of the optical spectrum. The power and efficiency were small—300 mW and 0.01%, respectively—but it was clear that the FEL scheme worked.In contrast to early FELs that used mirrors or optical cavities, today’s linac-based FELs, including SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source and the European XFEL, operate at much shorter wavelengths. They have proved indispensable for research in physics, chemistry, and biology because their highly intense, coherent electromagnetic radiation is tunable over a broad range of frequencies.In 1986 while still at Stanford, John became a professor of electrical engineering. Two years later he joined Duke University’s physics department, and the following year he transported his FEL research laboratory there from Stanford and continued to direct it for almost 10 years. John moved to the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1998 and built an FEL facility from scratch using some parts obtained from Duke. The facility provided a unique opportunity for hands-on training of graduate students in FEL science and technologies. John was a great mentor; working side by side with students, he imparted his knowledge and expertise.John held 13 patents on FEL-related technological inventions. A legal dispute over some of his patents led to a judgment in John’s favor. On 3 October 2002, in Madey v. Duke University, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the university was infringing on two of John’s patents because it was profiting from them beyond the experimental use “solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry.” The historic case, which ended a 170-year-old practice in which scientists freely used patented technologies when working on basic research that had no commercial application, has been discussed and written about by many legal scholars around the world.Among the numerous awards and international recognitions that John received was the American Physical Society’s 2012 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. At the 2015 Nobel Symposium on Free-Electron Laser Research in Sigtuna, Sweden, he served as the keynote speaker.John will be remembered by his colleagues as the enthusiastic developer of the FEL and a prolific scientist of great drive and insight.© 2017 American Institute of Physics.

Some reminiscences from a long friendship: Table 1.

1. My first encounters with Yoichiro Nambu When I was in my first year of graduate studies, our department organized the first Nobel Symposium in physics in the spring of 1968. Essentially all the leading physicists in particle physics were there, and for a young student it was a great time to see and listen to all those famous scientists. The meeting later became very famous for Abdus Salam’s contribution [1], which led to his Nobel Prize. One of the speakers was Yoichiro Nambu. He talked about infinite-component field theories [2], a subject that is now solidly forgotten. I was in a small room in the back recording the sessions but could follow the talks, even though I did not understand much. I could see, however, the respect that the other speakers showed to him. In the fall of 1969 I visited my advisor who was on sabbatical in Austin for a few months. Nambu came there to give a talk and he then lectured about his factorization of the Veneziano Model amplitudes. This was certainly a subject I was beginning to be drawn to. In the summer of 1970 I went to a summer school in Copenhagen, mainly because Nambu was going to talk about dual models as it was announced. This was now the subject I had been starting to work on, not telling my advisor. Nambu did not make it there. Much later he told me that his car had broken down on his way to Chicago to go to Copenhagen. However, his preprint [3] for the meeting had arrived and it was distributed among the participants. This is the preprint in which he suggested the action for the bosonic string which came to be called the Nambu–Gotō action. In the preprint he dared to be braver than in an ordinary paper and there were lots of interesting ideas. He was even comparing the string to DNA at the end of the preprint. It eventually became a rarity and I used to keep it in a box in the attic of our department until someone cleaned out all my boxes of old preprints. The Nambu paper was the only one I really missed.

Particle physics and condensed matter: the saga continues

Ideas from quantum field theory and topology have proved remarkably fertile in suggesting new phenomena in the quantum physics of condensed matter. Here I will supply some broad, unifying context, both conceptual and historical, for the abundance of results reported at the Nobel Symposium on ‘New Forms of Matter, Topological Insulators and Superconductors’. Since they distill some most basic ideas in their simplest forms, these concluding remarks might also serve, for non-specialists, as an introduction.

The Nobel Symposium 156 new forms of matter: topological insulators and superconductors

Eddy Ardonne Hans Hansson and Stellan Ostlund 1 Stockholm University, Sweden Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden The Nobel Symposium 156, ‘New forms of matter: topological insulators and superconductors’ took place from Friday 13 June until Sunday 15 June 2014. The venue for this Symposium was Hogberga Gard, on Lindingo, an island just east of Stockholm. The aim of the Symposium was to bring together leading scientists to discuss the latest results and important future directions in the rapidly developing field of topological states of matter. The Symposium welcomed 52 international participants, and 22 local observers. The program of the Symposium consisted of six sessions, each of which was introduced by an introductory talk, followed by shorter presentations. The last ordinary session was followed by a lively panel discussion. In these Proceedings, you will find a selection of the topics that were discussed during the Symposium. We would like to thank Petra Nodler for her invaluable administrative support, as well as the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Nobel Foundation, Nordita and Stockholm University, who supported this Nobel Symposium.

Bott–Kitaev periodic table and the diagonal map

Building on the ten-way symmetry classification of disordered fermions, the authors have recently given a homotopy-theoretic proof of Kitaev's ‘periodic table’ for topological insulators and superconductors. The present paper offers an introduction to the physical setting and the mathematical model used. Basic to the proof is the so-called diagonal map, a natural transformation akin to the Bott map of algebraic topology, which increases by one unit both the momentum-space dimension and the symmetry index of translation-invariant ground states of gapped free-fermion systems. This mapping is illustrated here with a few examples of interest. (Based on a talk delivered by the senior author at the Nobel Symposium on ‘New Forms of Matter: Topological Insulators and Superconductors’; Stockholm, 13–15 June, 2014.)

Conversation with Charles P. O'Brien

Conversation with <scp>C</scp>harles <scp>P</scp>. <scp>O</scp>'<scp>B</scp>rien

Goodbye International Journal of Andrology, welcome Andrology!

Goodbye <i>International Journal of Andrology</i>, welcome <i>Andrology</i>!