LISA – Bringing the Gravitational Wave Revolution to Space Gravitational Wave (GW) observatories are humanity’s newest tool for studying the universe. After decades of development efforts, terrestrial interferometers such as LIGO and Virgo are now routinely detecting ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by distant astrophysical cataclysms such as...
Infrared Interferometry of the Galactic Center Black Hole The Galactic Center harbors the nearest massive black hole. With a distance of only 8 kpc, it is the closest laboratory to study the astrophysical processes at work in these extreme objects, and to probe Einstein's general theory of relativity in the...
TeV Halos and their connection to the local Leptonic Cosmic Ray flux The origin and propagation of cosmic rays (CRs) is one of the most important questions in astroparticle physics nowadays. CRs generated by known sources also serve as background to those putatively generated by more exotic phenomena. Apart from...
Coherent neutrino scattering: from experimental challenges to new frontiers in neutrino physics The detection of coherent-neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS) opens a new window to study the fundamental properties of neutrinos and to probe physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Given the very low recoil energies (eV - keV)...
Stellar Forensics with the Most Powerful Explosions in the Universe Core-collapse Supernovae (SNe), Long-duration Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and exotic transients are exploding massive stars and constitute the most powerful explosions in the universe. Because they are visible over large cosmological distances, release elements heavier than Helium, and leave behind extreme...
Gravitational waves in a new light Ultra-precisely stabilised lasers are the interferometric light sources at the heart of gravitational wave detectors. To achieve ever-higher detection rates for meaningful gravitational wave astronomy, ever-greater detection sensitivity is required. In this talk, I will introduce the principle of interferometric gravitational wave detection, and...
Recent results from IceCube and the future of neutrino astronomy at the South Pole The IceCube neutrino observatory at the geographic South Pole has now been operating at full capacity for ten years. Following the first observation of astrophysical neutrinos in the TeV -- PeV energy range in 2013, cosmic...
Origin of UHECR: current status of a decades-long open question Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) are the most energetic known particles of the Universe, being accelerated to energies up to 7 orders of magnitude higher than those achieved in human-made accelerators. Their origins, however, remain an intriguing puzzle even decades after...
Light-Shining-Through-A-Wall: The ALPS II experiment at DESY The ALPS II at DESY in Hamburg is a light-shining-through-a-wall (LSW) experiment searching for axion-like elementary particles in the sub eV mass range, which are motivated by astrophysics and cosmology. ALPS II aims at an axion-photon coupling sensitivity which is several orders of...
The ECAP Laboratory The ECAP Laboratory will provide the infrastructure for the experimental-based research of the scientific groups of the institute. The concept of this "Forschungsbau" as well as the timeline for the completion and start of operation will be presented.
Radio Detection of High Energy Neutrinos and Deep Learning In this seminar talk, I will present the current status of in-ice radio detection of ultra-high-energy (UHE, E > 10^16 eV) neutrinos and how we use deep learning to improve the trigger system and event reconstruction. UHE neutrinos are connected to...
Two years of eROSITA all-sky surveys: The variable X-ray sky The eROSITA telescope onboard the SRG satellite was launched on 13 July 2019. After an initial phase of calibration and performance verification observations eROSITA started its all-sky survey operation in December 2019. Covering the entire sky within 6 months, eROSITA...