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Heather Logan

@helogan.bsky.social

Theoretical particle physicist, university professor, nature enthusiast, Wiccan HPS (dual Lexi/Gard), autistic person. She/her. https://people.physics.carleton.ca/~logan/

738 Posts469 Follower211 Folgt
Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Important thread. There's a good argument here that not naming your "collaborator" up-front is academic fraud.

Crystal Fleming クリスタル@alwaystheself.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The HTML 'blink' tag is here to stay. We need to stop fearmongering about the HTML 'blink' tag and start finding the ways that the HTML 'blink' tag can be used ethically and to support our causes. Naysayers need to realize that this technology is inevitable.

Robert McNees@mcnees.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Microsoft Bob is here to stay. We need to stop fearmongering about Microsoft Bob and start finding the ways that Microsoft Bob can be used ethically and to support our causes. Naysayers need to realize that this technology is inevitable.

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New paper today! ⚛️ Cool (semi-)analytic results on nonperturbative fermion production during scalar field oscillations (e.g. of the inflaton, post-inflation). Great work by our student Fazlul Yasin as part of his PhD! arxiv.org/abs/2604.07326

Analytic Approximations for Fermionic Preheating

Non-thermal fermions can be produced non-perturbatively in the early universe during coherent oscillations of a scalar field. We explore fermion production in $λϕ^{4}$ inflation through this mechanism and analyze the momentum spectrum of the fermions produced, which depends on a coupling parameter $q$. For $q \gtrsim 0.01$, the main contribution to the total number density comes from an approximately half-filled Fermi sphere as a result of non-adiabaticity. For $q\lesssim 0.01$, we find that the major contributions instead come from resonance peaks at higher momentum values. We find a simple relation to predict the momentum values corresponding to resonance peaks for any $q$. We also obtain analytic power-law approximations for the total number density of fermions and find that it is proportional to $q^{1/2}$ for $q\lesssim 0.01$ and proportional to $q^{3/4}$ for $q\gtrsim 10$. If fermions produced by this mechanism make up the entirety of dark matter, we estimate lower bounds on their mass.

arxiv.org

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Some time after my Mac updated its OS, I spent two hours I couldn't really spare getting my Fortran compiler to work again. You really don't want to have to do that when you're someplace without decent WiFi, like say halfway to the moon.

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis@kendrawrites.com · 4mo ago

You know how sometimes when you upgrade your computer you can't get the printer to work anymore? Now imagine you're mucking about with millions if not billions of dollars in tech that need to work together. Yeah

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

No joke paper will ever surpass the sublime brilliance of Supersplit Supersymmetry, arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0..., "born" on this day in 2005. 100% correct physics, and a pointed commentary on some of the excesses of the field at that time. ⚛️

Supersplit Supersymmetry

The possible existence of an exponentially large number of vacua in string theory behooves one to consider possibilities beyond our traditional notions of naturalness. Such an approach to electroweak ...

arxiv.org

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm preparing lecture notes on the polarized e-e+ --> mu-mu+ cross section (Peskin & Schroeder Sec. 5.2) and I'm gonna use it as a launchpad to talk about forward-backward asymmetries and I am so excited about this! ⚛️

Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Sounds like CAUT has drunk the kool-aid. Sad to see them buy in to the denigration of faculty who still value the intellectual development and creativity of our students.

CAUT/ACPPU@caut.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“We must not respond to autonomous AI technologies by regressing to past ways or adopting punitive policies that fragment student experiences and access.” Read more on how AI fits in teaching and learning in the latest Bulletin: www.caut.ca/bulletin/cre...

Illustration of hands typing on a laptop with a speech bubble illustration on screen. Text that reads “We must not respond to autonomous AI technologies by regressing to past ways or adopting policies that fragment student experiences and access.”
Heather Logan@helogan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

You have to realize that to a person in their 80s with dementia, "2028" sounds like a year still many decades in the future.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4mo ago

To clarify: the helicopters are not the implausible part of this proposal. And the rest of the technology is not necessarily impossible, but 2028 is absurd and it's completely unclear why this should take priority over sample return or the dozens of other fully planned activities now on hold.