November 17 2026 

Zhiquan Sun (UC Berkeley)

Location: Room 324, Physics South, UC Berkeley Campus Room MAP 

Time: 4:00pm Pacific Time

Host: Felipe Ortega Gama

[Slide]  [Youtube]

Title: Strongly Coupled Soft Functions

Abstract:  The renormalization of operators built out of Wilson lines that meet at an angle (cusp) involve what is known as the cusp anomalous dimension, a universal object appearing in many processes in QCD due to the divergences from gluonic interactions. In this talk, I will discuss the vacuum expectation value of a pair of cusped Wilson lines separated in the transverse direction. This configuration can be related to a simple observable in heavy quark transverse momentum-dependent (TMD) fragmentation as well as the TMD soft function. I will compute the expectation values of cusped Wilson lines in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory at strong coupling via the AdS/CFT correspondence, an approach complementary to perturbative calculations of the cusp anomalous dimension. I will also discuss the possible generalizations of our setup and results to soft functions in other gauge theories with a holographic dual.

November 24 2026 

Koichiro Yasuda (UCLA)

Location: Room 324, Physics South, UC Berkeley Campus Room MAP 

Time: 4:00pm Pacific Time

Host: Shoto Aoki

[Slide]  [Youtube]

Title: Extracting the low-energy reactor neutrino spectrum from CEvNS data: an application of dark matter direct detection techniques

Abstract: Nuclear reactors are the most intense human-made neutrino sources, yet about 70% of their antineutrinos, those below the 1.8 MeV inverse beta decay threshold, have never been measured because standard detectors are insensitive to them. Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS), in which a neutrino nudges an entire nucleus, can reach this hidden region. The detector, however, sees only the nuclear recoil, so the neutrino spectrum must be reconstructed by working backward, a task known as unfolding. In this talk, I will introduce these ideas from the basics and present an unfolding method borrowed from dark matter direct searches that needs no hand-tuned regularization parameters. Applying it to mock data for a future cryogenic germanium detector, I will show that it performs comparably to standard techniques.

If time allows, I will mention my outreach activities, including a peer-to-peer multiplayer relativistic shooting game.

January 26 2027 

João Silva (UCLA)

Location: Swiatecki Lounge B70 annex - 228 

Time: 4:00pm Pacific Time

Host: Yuuka Kanakubo

[Slide]  [Youtube]

Title: Energy correlators in QCD matter

Abstract: Energy correlators connect angular distributions of final-state energy to the dynamics of QCD radiation. In heavy-ion collisions, they also carry information about the interaction of high-energy partons with the produced matter and the medium's response to deposited energy. A central question is which properties of QCD matter can be inferred from their angular structure. 

I will introduce a description of high-energy partons propagating and radiating in a QCD background. Motivated by the momentum anisotropies characteristic of the early stages of heavy-ion collisions, I will discuss how anisotropic momentum broadening generates azimuthal structure inside jets. I will show its imprint on energy correlators, focusing on heavy-flavour pairs, which provide cleaner access to the underlying partonic splittings. Turning to higher point correlations, I will examine contributions from medium-induced radiation and medium response, including the challenge of distinguishing their angular imprints. More broadly, I will outline how these observables reflect the mean and fluctuating components of energy flow in QCD matter.