Theoretical physics: dark matter and cosmology
I'm a PhD student at Queen's University and a visiting researcher at Heidelberg University. I work on dark matter and cosmology, including composite dark matter and its imprint on the early universe, and axions.
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Master's at Heidelberg
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Composite Dark Matter, Part II: What Assembly Leaves Behind
2026-08-26
When dark matter assembles into large composites, the binding energy has to go somewhere. In a secluded dark sector it goes into the scalar field that holds the composites together, and that leftover field can show up in the CMB.
2280 words
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11 minutes
Composite Dark Matter, Part I: Dark Matter Built From Pieces
2026-08-25
Almost everything you have ever touched is a bound state. What if dark matter is too? A walk from dark atoms to dark nuggets heavier than a bacterium, and why a detector a meter across might see only one a year.
2553 words
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13 minutes
Furry's Theorem, Part 1: Why an Odd Number of Photons Can't Come From Nothing
2026-07-25
A path-integral and diagrammatic proof that any correlation function of an odd number of photon fields vanishes exactly — the photon is C-odd, the vacuum is C-even, and QED conserves C — plus the three places the proof most often goes wrong.
2251 words
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11 minutes
Furry's Theorem, Part 2: What It Buys You
2026-07-25
Spending Furry's theorem: no photon tadpole, no three-photon vertex, why Euler–Heisenberg has only even powers of F, whole classes of Feynman diagrams deleted for free, why light doesn't scatter off light until fourth order, and where the theorem breaks near a magnetar.
1204 words
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6 minutes
Self-Energy, 1PI Diagrams, and the Dyson Resummation
2026-05-02
How perturbation theory actually computes the field strength renormalization Z and the shift from bare mass m₀ to physical mass m, by resumming all 1PI insertions into the full propagator i/(p² − m₀² − M²(p²)).
1321 words
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7 minutes
Why Renormalization Is Needed: The Källén–Lehmann Spectral Representation
2026-05-01
A non-perturbative derivation showing that the analytic structure of the interacting two-point function forces field strength renormalization Z and a physical mass m ≠ m₀ — long before any loops or infinities appear.
1716 words
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9 minutes
Starting MSc Physics at Heidelberg — What We Wish We Knew Earlier
2026-04-15
A practical companion to a video I made in collaboration with STARGAZER on beginning the MSc Physics program at Heidelberg University — covering courses, research groups, admin, and life in the city.
2517 words
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13 minutes
Lie Groups and Lie Algebras, Part IV: The Poincaré Group and the Classification of Particles
2026-04-06
Exploring the Poincaré group, its Casimir operators, and Wigner's classification of elementary particles by mass and spin/helicity.
2999 words
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15 minutes