Physics Friday Bulletin 2016-12-09

/ December 9, 2016

Local Area Scout Post

Stamps and a posting facility will be available from Stephen Holt in C504 Electronics Workshop Physics Building. Stamps are again 30p each. Last posting day is Tuesday 13th December. http://www.lonsdalescouts.org.uk/2016/11/scouts-christmas-post/

Stephen Holt

Physics Christmas Celebrations

If you have not yet booked your place at the Physics Christmas lunch please come and see me today Friday 9th December. The lunch will take place at 1230hrs on Thursday 22nd December in the function room (upstairs) of The Borough, Dalton Square, Lancaster. Please see page 2 of this link for details of the menu: http://www.theboroughlancaster.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/xmas-menu-2016-Borough-final.pdf I’ll take your menu choices when you pay me, (£15 for two courses/ £18 for three courses). There is the option of having Prosecco at £3.75 a glass (to be purchased on the day).

We will also have mince pies and drinks before the Christmas lunch at 1130 in the atrium (no need to book a place).

All Physics staff, PG and UG students are invited to celebrate Christmas and the end of the first phase of the Physics refurbishment at 1600 on Friday 16th December. Mince pies, mulled wine and orange juice will be available. Invitations have been sent via Eventbrite but please note that it could end up in your Junk E-mail folder. If you don’t receive the email please let me know. Note that you must have a ticket as capacity is limited. Bookings will close at COP on Monday 12th December.

For the events that are being held in the Physics Atrium we would appreciate that you dispose of your rubbish before leaving so that admin staff and the cleaners are not put upon.

Gráinne Wilkinson

Physics and Isolab weekly updates

Please see below details of scheduled works on the Physics refurbishment and Isolab projects for next week.

Physics scheduled works

  • M&E strip out – medium noise, no vibration
  • Demolition to level A incl screed removal – high noise, medium vibration
  • Forming new brickwork openings – high noise, medium vibration
  • Protection works – low noise, no vibration
  • Re-Roofing works – low noise, no vibration
  • Window installation – medium noise, minimum vibration
  • Scaffolding – minimum noise, minimum vibration
  • New toilet block façade works – medium noise, minimum vibration
  • External drainage connection – medium noise, medium vibration
  • M&E builders work – high noise, medium vibration
  • Plaster removal – high noise, medium vibration
  • M&E 1st fix – medium noise, medium vibration
  • 1st fix partition works – medium noise, medium vibration

Should you have any queries regarding these projects please contact the Senior Project Manager, Helen Wood, via the Facilities Helpdesk on facilities.helpdesk@lancaster.ac.uk  or 01524 593333.

Madeline Asquith

Todays: Particle Physics Seminar: Searching for dark matter at LUX and LUX-ZEPLIN

Date: 09 December 2016, 13:45 – 14:45

Venue: Physics C36

Speaker: Dr Jim Dobson, UCL

Located 1 mile underground in the Davis cavern at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, the Large Underground Xenon experiment used a 250 kg liquid xenon time projection chamber to search for the low energy recoils of xenon nuclei as they collide with our local galactic dark matter.

In this talk I present results from the final 300-day science run of LUX and discuss the pioneering low-energy calibrations that support them. Although LUX found no evidence for dark matter it placed the world’s strongest constraint on the interaction of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), excluding at 90% CL WIMP-nucleon couplings greater than 2.2 . 10-46 cm2 for WIMPs of mass 50 GeV/c2.

Looking to the future, construction of LUX’s successor, the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, is well underway. LZ builds upon the demonstrated response to ~few keV nuclear recoils and the excellent self-shielding properties of liquid xenon and scales the TPC design beyond all existing and underway experiments. I will give an overview of LZ and the challenges associated with this scale up, discuss the physics reach for both WIMPs and other non-WIMP signals, and present the current status of the experiment.

Grainne Wilkinson

Related posts