Update: This event was a big experiment to try and test a couple of different ideas aiming at making virtual workshops as interesting and stimulating as possible. These ideas included: virtual poster sessions, virtual coffee breaks (including coffee break presentations), a Virtual Axion Institute on Mattermost (including a coffee room, a pinboard for all posters, and virtual guest offices), and a virtual guestbook. We learned a lot from this experiment, so if you are interested in organizing a "Zooming in on ..." workshop yourself, please contact us---we'd be happy to share our experience with you. We also believe that our experiment was more or less successful. Here's some of the feedback that we received:

"Many thanks for the nice workshop! I really wish we had more events like this in our community, even after the pandemics is handled properly. The main positive aspect I would like to highlight is the inclusiveness that a virtual workshop promotes. Everybody from around the world is able to participate without spending stratospheric amounts of money on travel, accommodation, meals etc. This is especially true for overseas participants, but also within Europe the available budget may be prohibitive. So congrats and many thanks to the organizers, and I do hope the idea is spread and widely adopted from now on."

"Thanks for the really nice workshop! I think it was a brilliant idea to use the mattermost channels in this manner. It allows for organized discussion. I hope this platform goes on and seeds tons of future projects! Thanks for organizing it!!!"

"Thanks a lot for organizing this fantastic online workshop. I really enjoyed the talks and the overall atmosphere. What I liked was the possibility to chat afterwards in the mattermost, and having the possibility to directly ask questions. Thanks a lot !!!"

"Thanks so much for organizing this workshop. It was awesome to be able to participate even across different time zones. The communication was great and it was very well organized."

"I like the policy that you provide the video recordings only during the workshop and remove it later. This provides some incentive to really participate during the "workshop dates" but still gives flexibility in watching the talks. There is some imbalance for talks in the beginning/end of the workshop. So maybe an alternative policy would be to provide each talk for a fixed amount of time, e.g., 72 hrs?"

Overview: The goal of this virtual Zoom workshop is to focus on the role of axions in the early universe, zooming in on intriguing aspects of their interplay with cosmological dynamics and evolution. Topics covered include axions + (Monday) dark matter / (Tuesday) gauge fields / (Wednesday) baryogenesis / (Thursday) naturalness / (Friday) gravitational waves. On each day, we will have a number of invited expert talks, which will be scheduled so as to make them accessible across as many time zones as possible. Each talk will consist of 40 minutes presentation and 20 minutes discussion. In addition, we will provide ample opportunity for informal discussions and social interactions.

Seminars:
(1) Wednesday 2PM: TH Colloquium, Robert Brandenberger
https://indico.cern.ch/event/925915/

(2) Thursday 2PM: BSM Forum, Luca Di Luzio
https://indico.cern.ch/event/917072/

(3) Friday 6 PM: Special XENON1T Seminar, Michelle Galloway
 

Talks:
- Neil Barrie
- Kim Berghaus
- Aleksandr Chatrchyan
- Daniel Figueroa
- Tomohiro Fujita
- Keisuke Harigaya
- Benedict von Harling
- Anson Hook
- Kohei Kamada
- Matthew Kleban
- David J. E. Marsh
- Leila Mirzagholi
- Kyohei Mukaida
- Gilad Perez
- Mauro Pieroni
- Géraldine Servant
- Oleksandr Sobol
- Ben Stefanek
- Fuminobu Takahashi
- Ira Wolfson

Posters:
- James Alvey
- Fernando Arias Aragón
- Raymond Co
- Michael Alan Fedderke
- Yuta Hamada
- Sang Hui Im
- Ashu Kushwaha
- Jacob Leedom
- Enrico Morgante
- Ogan Ozsoy
- Alexandros Papageorgiou
- Alexis Plascencia
- Tanmay Poddar
- Pablo Quílez
- Mario Reig
- Thomas Schwetz
- Caner Ünal
- Yuki Watanabe

Virtual Axion Institute: We created the Mattermost workspace "Axions",

https://mattermost.web.cern.ch/axions

which we will use as a virtual institute during the workshop and where we will meet during the virtual coffee breaks. All speakers and everyone who is presenting a poster will have their own virtual guest office in this institute.

Poster sessions: At the end of each day, we will have a poster session, where everyone who is interested can present their work on axions in the early Universe on a "poster", i.e., one slide. These poster presentations can be followed up by more detailed presentations (e.g., via Zoom) in the virtual guest offices. Please contact the organizers if you are interested in presenting a poster.