About me:
Luke Johns is a NASA Einstein Fellow at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in 2020 from UC San Diego. His research interests are centered on neutrino physics and include various sites and subjects that overlap with it: supernovae and neutron-star mergers, the early universe, beyond-Standard-Model phenomenology, and quantum dynamics and transport. His work is motivated above all by the mysteries and consequences of neutrino mass.
Seminar Title:
Neutrino oscillations in the multimessenger era
Seminar Date:
Nov. 1st, 2022
Abstract:
Several decades after the first solar neutrino detections, neutrino astronomy now stands as a unique pillar of multimessenger science. But whereas neutrino oscillations in the solar context were the solution to a problem, in other astrophysical contexts they are the problem. This is especially true of core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers. Even though these sites are two of the marquee targets of multimessenger astronomy, and two of the most carefully modeled systems in computational astrophysics, neutrino oscillations are yet to be reliably incorporated into the relevant predictions and simulations. This talk will give a broad overview of neutrino mixing in these settings, as well as in the proposed sources of IceCube neutrinos and in the cosmic background. Basic concepts will be emphasized throughout, because the practical challenges of neutrino transport, which may appear technical and venue-specific, are in fact firmly tied to fundamental questions concerning quantum and statistical physics.