We now have get organized for the spring semester. As you all know the fall semester schedule has been completefor the past few  weeks. Just as a reminder it can be found at http://www.lns.mit.edu/seminars/nppc.html. I think that the quality of the fall term has been good but I am not completely happy that many people only come to talks in their specialized fields. For example we had a relative small turnout for Rory Miskimen last Monday and he gave some very interesting experimental results on the long range (pion cloud) structure of the  proton including some radii which are about 3 times the electromagnetic radius. If you have any suggestions about what to do about this I would like to hear about them.

I am including the calendar for the spring semester. There are 11 open dates- not a lot so we will have to be even more selective than usual.

We have 4 left over invites from the fall semester-  these are people that we invited but could not make it –or who had to cancel. I suggest that we invite them first. I have indicated who should take care of this. I think that it would be a good idea to try to get 2 dates from each of them as this is a free for all and it will be first come first serve. Christoph- you don’t have anyone in this so maybe you should get some priority- let us know your suggestions. I know that Peter Fisher has some- I plan to contact him very soon. I also plan to send a general request for input to the faculty but without a personal contact that has usually not produced much results.

I am also including a rather large list of good speakers from the Panic conference in Santa Fe that Krishna sent us. In addition I have a list of older suggestions. These lists contain some very interesting suggestions and some overlaps of topics.

I suggest that we start the process of making suggestions by e mail to the entire committee and that we have a meeting on Tues Dec. 20 at 4 PM to try to make a coherent schedule for the semester. Please try to take care of the left over speakers from the fall semester by this date.

Best regards, Aron

Left over speakers from the Fall Semester

• Werner Vogelsang? RHIC Spin-theory (Bernd Surrow)
• Bill Donnelly- Witek Nazarewicz, University of Tennessee, RIA
• Alan Guth-invite either Lisa Randall or Arkni-Hamed of Harvard. You could do both if you want.
• AB- Krishna Kumar- Parity Violating e-p Scattering Experiments

LNS Colloquium- Spring Calendar

• Feb 6 –Registration Day- No LNS colloquium
• Feb 13
• Feb 20-Vacation-President Day
• Feb 27
• March 6
• March 13
• March 20
• March 27 –Spring Break
• April 3
• April 10
• April 17-Vacation-Patriot Day
• April 24
• May 1
• May 8
• May 15
• May 22- Final Exam Period-schedule only if an unusual opportunity presents itself

Some left over suggestions

• Richard Milner: Brad Phillipone, Cal Tech, neutron physics, EDM
• AB- ask Joe Formaggio for suggestions about neutrino physics
• Richard Milner- Walter Henning- RIA Experimental physics and GSI
• Alan had a few more suggestions- Henry Tye and Robert Brandenberger
• AB- contact Peter Fisher, and Bolek
• Boris Keyser,  APS Neutrino Study Report
• Peter Fisher: Joel Butler, Fermilab BTeV .
• Alan Nathan, Illinois  Compton Scattering From the Proton in the Hard  Scattering Regime

Nov 2

iain, dan,

there were several plenary talks at PANIC that i think could be turned into either good LNS colloquia or good departmental colloquia.

David Kosower. Saclay. "QCD at the dawn of the LHC era".  this was a really nice talk on recent progress in perturbative QCD.  it's clear he could give a very nice LNS colloquium on this. departmental colloquium is more of a stretch, but his speaking ability is very high so i presume he would judge his audience well.

Urs Wiedemann: i already recommended to iain.

Jamie Nagle: experimental perspective on what we're learning from RHIC.  excellent talk. could be considered for LNS colloquium, but only after checking with Wit Busza. wit might view it as stepping on toes of locals.

Mike Ramsey-Musolf: "probing the fundamental symmetries of the early universe."  about "precision tests physics". eg EDMs,but other examples too. it was a good talk.  i can't see it as a departmental colloquium, but would be very good for LNS.

David DeMille . Yale. talk on searches for electron EDM.  he is doing a new expreiment using the PbO molecule.  it is a really cool idea, he gave an excellent talk, and he expects to be pushing the limits down by 2 orders of magnitude.  results expected in a year or two.  once he has results, this is an obvious departmental colloquium. (but not before results.)

Boris Kayser. basically a state of neutrino physics talk. he gave it at colloquium level.  i think we've had  a colloquium like that relatively recently, maybe even by boris.  if not, he's a good choice.

Mark Trodden: too similar to Sean Carroll, so not now. but, he gave an excellent talk.

Dan Akerib: direct WIMP searches, focussing on CDMS.  we had him recently, right?  i know i saw him give a talk recently, but can't remember if it was colloquium or not.  given that CDMS has dropped the limits in a big way recently, if we didn't already get that talk we should.

Peter Gorham, Hawaii. "New Prospects for detection of the highest energy cosmogenic neutrinos."  this was a neat talk, in that it described experiments i had never heard of before. you kjnow about AMANDA/IceCube, which detects Cerenkov LIGHT. these experiments detect Cerenkov radio waves.   i thought it was nifty.  maybe a deprtmental colloquium? not sure.

Evelyn Thomson, Penn.  experimentalist talk on progress in top quark physics.  she gave an excellent talk.  i recommend her for a colloquium on the condition that it comes after Moriond, so that she can talk about the results to be announced there.

Matt Strassler: "String theory making contact with hadron physics". this would be an exellent LNS colloquium.

Reinhard Schumacher: status of experimental pentaquark searches. of course a downer of a talk.  but, very clearly presented. if there is a desire for such a talk in LNS colloquium series, this guy would be a good choice. not a physics colloquium.

i hope that gives you both some ideas.

krishna

-- SteveNahn - 19 Dec 2005