The Underground Quest for Dark Matter
Chamindu Sangeeth Amarasinghe
In the prevalent framework of cosmology, dark matter accounts for 85% of the matter in the universe. Despite this abundance, little is known about the nature of dark matter due to its extremely weak interactions with ordinary matter. In this talk, Chamindu shall describe how the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment seeks to detect dark matter particles of a certain type as they pass through Earth using a detector located 4850 feet underground.

Shapeshifting Mystery: the Muon-to-Electron Conversion Experiment
Mackenzie Devilbiss
The Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab will search for the conversion of a muon to an electron, a process so rare that it is deemed to be forbidden in the Standard Model of particle physics! This experiment is truly akin to picking a needle out of a haystack: to look for a very rare muon process, we need to identify all of the other ways that muons can decay and rule them out. With detectors designed to find this 'needle', Mu2e will better inform what we know about the universe on the smallest scale.

Thank you to the Van Loo family who has generously supported this lecture.