About Quantum Prana, my logo and particle cosmology

My logo certainly carries my initials, however there’s a bit more meaning in it.

As you know from my Home page, I am a theoretical physicist, and I got my PhD at the University of Helsinki in 2010. More specifically, my field was particle cosmology with topic supersymmetric dark matter and supergravity. My papers and theses are found here.

Since I am a certified nerd, it is now clear why I use the name Quantum Prana: quantum physics, though still controversial, provides the basics for most of the physics of the last 100 years. Prana is the Sanskrit word for “life force”, which can be thought as “energy”. Thus Quantum Prana is the quantum energy which “surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” (cit.)

This is also the reason why I am called the Dark Matter Guitar 🙂

Related to that, my logo carries the q and p letters in lower case: in mathematics, they are the action-angle coordinates upon which ALL of quantum mechanics (and by extension, quantum field theory) is founded. In fact, by using Hamiltonian mechanics the pair (q,p) describes the quantum states, where q(t) is the position and p(t) is the momentum of the particle.

Starting from q and p, you get all the theory, including cool stuff like the Heisenberg indetermination principle, the Pauli exclusion principle, Schrödinger’s cats and so on.

And on top of that, I also think the symmetry of q p looks cool! 😀

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