News & Events
Yong Xu (McGill)
Event Details
McDonald Institute Seminar Series
Location: Queen's: STI 401 / YouTube
Date: September 10, 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Dr. Yong Xu is a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University working in Theoretical particle cosmology, and early Universe Physics
Weakly Coupled Messengers of Reheating
Abstract:
The Universe between inflation and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis remains largely uncharted. Reheating fills this gap, but we still know very little about when it ended, how hot the Universe became, or what dynamics governed the transition to radiation domination. Weakly coupled particles offer a way to probe this hidden epoch. Once produced, they can remain out of thermal equilibrium and preserve information about the conditions in which they were created. In this talk, I will use WIMPs, sterile neutrinos, and gravitons to illustrate this idea. Their abundances and spectra respond differently to the reheating history, allowing us to probe key parameters such as the reheating temperature and the inflaton mass.
The McDonald Institute seminar will be held in Stirling 401 and streamed live to the McDonald Institute YouTube channel.
A Zoom link is also available and shared via email by the organizers. Please reach out to admin@mcdonaldinstitute.ca for access.