About this page
As a physicist I write a lot of code, blog posts, and a lot talks. This page summaries my outreach activities, some useful tools I've developed, the big talks I've given, and a few other bits and pieces relevant to my job.
Outreach activities
Advent Calendar 2012
This is a collection of YouTube videos as made as an outreach project in December 2012. Each day of Advent gives a different interesting fact about particle physics.
April Fools posts
I write for the blogging site, Quantum Diaries, and it is traditional to post April Fools posts. Here is my collection of posts.
CERN standup
In 2014 I decided to perform standup comedy at CERN. It was one of the most fun and informative things I've ever done, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their communication skills.
Blog: Quantum Diaries
I write for Qunatum Diaries, one of the most exciting groups of bloggers in the particle physics community. It's a small workload, but one that's still tricky to fit into a hectic schedule!
Blog: SMU Physics
When I worked at SMU in 2010 I kept a blog with my boss, Steve. This is where I wrote some posts before my writing got noticed by the US LHC blog team. It was through US LHC blogs that I started to write for Quantum Diaries.
Tools
Box plotter
One of the most popular ways to compare results in particle physics is to create plots that show different results with horizontal bands (sometimes known as boxes), making comparisons easier on the eye. Unsatisfied with the quality of available solutions at the time, I created my own scripts which would make these plots for use in my thesis.
Feynman diagram maker
One of the most common diagrams that particle physicists use are Feynman diagrams. There are already a few tools that can be used to make them, but they usually have some significant drawback (including non-intuitive interface, poor quality graphics, lack of control over the final image, text only input.) This is a drag and drop style Feynman diagram maker aimed at making creation of the diagrams as quick and simple as possible. This is quite an advanced project with lots of scope for further development.
i, short for indico
At CERN we used a meeting organisation system called indico. Each meeting had a unique ID that was used to identify the resources associated with it. In many instances there were times when a person had to access a meeting page when they only knew the unique id, and not the full uri. I made this tool to obtain the full uri, given only the meeting id. Since this project shortens the uri for indico it is called "\(i\)", which leads to all kinds of puns.
Symbol browser
This is a simple tool to allow the user to quickly copy a string of symbols.
Uncertainties radar
When dealing with systematic uncertainties in physics it's often important to know the relative contributions of each unceratinty to the overall uncertainty. This script compares all the uncertiaties, assuming they are \(0\%\) correlated.
Talks
[pdf] Blois 2015
In June 2015 I was invited to the Recontres de Blois to present the latest results on the searches for heavy resonances at the LHC. Here are the slides.
[pdf] Charm 2010
In October 2010 I was invited to the Charm 2010 conference to present my work on the study of leptonic decays of the Ds meson. Here are the slides.
[pdf] CIPANP 2012
In June 2012 I was invited to the Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics to present my and others' work on the study of Higgs bosons decaying with tau leptons in the final states. Here are the slides.
[pdf] IAP 2015
In June 2015 I presented a talk to the IAP about searches for massives resonances at the LHC, which was an update of the talk I presented at Blois.
[pdf] LCWS 2014
In October 2014 I was invited to the International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders to present a study on the scalar boson mass measurements at the LHC. Here are the slides.
[pdf] On the effects of a massive body...
One day on the way to work I wrote this short paper on the tram. It's short and to the point, and worth a quick read for a laugh.
Other resources
Blog: Aidan Finds a New Career
I was a physicist and I loved the job, but it has never been my ambition to become a professor, so is time to move on to other exciting projects and prioritise other aspects of my life. Here is where I write about my search for a new job and the advantages and disadvantages of changing direction.
ATLAS links
This page contains a list of resources that are useful to a physicist working on the ATLAS experiment.
CMS links
This page contains a list of resources that are useful to a physicist working on the CMS experiment.
GRID achievements
The GRID is a globally distributed data analysis system for high energy physics, which stored petabytes of data and simulation. Back in the day it was quite frustrating to use, so someone created a list of achievements to make the process a bit more bearable. Thankfully things are a lot easier now.
Particle multiplets
For my thesis I needed to describe many of the know mesons and baryons. To better illustrate their relation to each other I decided to create an SVG image showing a three dimensional representation in isospin and weak hypercharge space.
Blog: Physics cheatsheets
Every now and then I come across a tricky physics problem that has a simple solution that can be hard to find. Whenever that happens I put the solution here for future reference.
Reflections
A "reflection" is a term in particle physics for when a decay of one particle looks like the decay of another. It's a topic which has been studied for about fifty years, and seemed like an excellent chance to combine physics and coding.
Blog: ROOT Fail
I use ROOT in nearly all my work. Most of the time it's fine and it does what I want it to do. But occasionally it fails so utterly that it's almost beautiful. This blog keeps track of the most awesome fails.
Semileptonic decays
Semileptonic decays are a useful probe into physics. This page makes predictions for semileptonic decays and compares them to the values from the Particle Data Group.
[pdf] Thesis
This is my thesis, "Measurements of \(\mathcal{B}(D_s\to\ell\nu_\ell)\) and \(f_{D_s}\) using data collected from the BaBar experiment.", The simple version.
