ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 CONTENTS
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ICTP FULL TECHNICAL REPORT 2017 INTRODUCTION This document is the full technical report of ICTP for the year 2017. For the non-technical description of 2017 highlights, please see the printed “ICTP: A Year in Review” publication. 2 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 CONTENTS Research High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (HECAP) ........................................................................ 7 Director's Research Group – String Phenomenology and Cosmology ...................................... 29 Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics (CMSP)............................................................................................ 31 Mathematics ........................................................................................................................................................................ 56 Earth System Physics (ESP) ......................................................................................................................................... 64 Applied Physics Multidisciplinary Laboratory (MLab) ....................................................................................................... 89 Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory (T/ICT4D) ......................................... 98 Medical Physics ................................................................................................................................................. 104 Fluid Dynamics ................................................................................................................................................... 106 Anchor Optics Research (AOR) Program............................................................................................... 107 Synchrotron Radiation Related Theory ................................................................................................. 108 Quantitative Life Sciences ........................................................................................................................................... 110 Training and Education Programmes Postgraduate Diploma Programme ........................................................................................................................ 122 ICTP-IAEA Sandwich Training Educational Programme (STEP) ............................................................. 125 Master's in Physics ........................................................................................................................................................ 129 PhD Programme in Earth Science, Fluid Dynamics and Mathematics: Interactions and Methods................................................................................................................................... 130 Joint International ICTP/SISSA PhD (JIISP) Programme in Physics and Mathematics ...................................................................................................................................... 132 Master’s in the Physics of Complex Systems ..................................................................................................... 134 Joint Master’s in High Performance Computing ………………………………………………………………… 135 Joint ICTP-UNITS Master of Advanced Studies in Medical Physics ……………………………………… 136 Career Support Associates Programme ................................................................................................................................................. 139 Federated Institutes Programme ............................................................................................................................ 147 Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) .................................................................................. 150 ICTP-Elettra Users Programme ................................................................................................................................ 153 SESAME Programme ...................................................................................................................................................... 155 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 3 Activities in Developing Countries Office of External Activities (OEA) .......................................................................................................................... 157 ICTP-South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR) ......................................... 163 Mesoamerican Centre for Theoretical Physics …………………………………………………………………… 164 ICTP-East African Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-EAIFR)………………………………….. 166 Physics Without Frontiers…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 168 Prizes and Awards ICTP Dirac Medal ............................................................................................................................................................. 170 ICTP Prize ............................................................................................................................................................................ 170 ICO/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Award ........................................................................................................................ 170 Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries......................................................................................................................................... 170 Scientific Support Services Marie Curie Library ........................................................................................................................................................ 171 Information and Communication Technology Section (ICTS) ................................................................... 173 The African Review of Physics ..................................................................................................................................... 173 Science Dissemination Unit ........................................................................................................................................ 174 Appendices ICTP Statistics 2017: Visits to Research and Training Activities ................................................................................................... 182 Summary of Research and Training Activities .......................................................................................... 199 Visitors and Person-Months by Country....................................................................................................... 203 Region of Origin, ICTP Visitors .......................................................................................................................... 208 4 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 5 RESEARCH 6 ICTP Full Technical Report 2017 HIGH ENERGY, COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS There are four broad research areas in the High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Section: I. Phenomenology of Particle Physics II. Cosmology III. The ICTP ATLAS Experimental group at the CERN Large Hadron Collider IV. String and Quantum field theories I. Phenomenology of Particle Physics In 2017 the group has been active in different aspects of particle phenomenology, ranging from collider physics to studies of electric dipole moments, lepton masses and mixing, neutrinos, dark matter, axions and other light particles. 1. Collider Phenomenology: Testing the Standard Model at the Collider If new physics lies at energies above those associated to the Standard Model particles, as hinted by current collider searches, finding better ways to prove the Standard Model as a low energy effective field theory is a very important direction of research. For this purpose the group explored new ways of measuring the interactions between the vector bosons, in particular in the WZ boson production at LHC. It has been shown that the analysis of the transverse momentum distribution helps to significantly improve the sensitivity to new physics interactions. Another observable which turned out to be strongly sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model is the azimuthal angle between the decay plane of the electroweak bosons and the scattering plane. A collider simulation has been performed to estimate the possibilities of the Large Hadron Collider to measure these interactions and it has shown that the new proposed observables can differentiate various new physics scenarios otherwise indistinguishable by the standard analysis. 2. Phenomenology of Dark Matter and New light particles QCD Axion abundance from string evolution Besides solving the strong CP problem of the Standard Model, the QCD Axion could also explain another open question of modern physics, the nature of dark matter. Depending on the primordial evolution of our Universe, axion particles could be created in different ways. In particular for high-scale inflationary scenarios the underlying symmetry associated to the axion field is expected to undergo a transition from an unbroken to a broken phase. In this scenario, configurations of so-called axionic strings form and evolve in the expanding Universe until, at the QCD cross-over scale when the axions gets a mass, strings eventually decay producing axions which would contribute the current dark matter abundance. The computation of the corresponding abundance of axions is very challenging and no agreement is currently present in the literature. Our group made an extensive study of the string evolution, performing simulations