Kristjan Kannike

Who Am I?

I am a senior researcher at the Laboratory of High Energy and Computational Physics of the NICPB, Estonia, where I am doing theoretical particle physics. Lately I have been interested in gravitational waves in the context of particle physics, dark matter, analytical vacuum stability or bounded-from-below conditions for scalar potentials, cosmic inflation, and Coleman-Weinberg symmetry breaking.

I have written articles for the Estonian popular-scientific magazine Horisont (Horizon) about particle physics and the LHC accelerator, dark energy and chameleon fields, Boltzmann brains, the Higgs boson and cosmic phase transitions.

Füüsika

I have written a Mathematica program to solve renormalisation group equations (RGE) in effective field theories.

Some more important articles of which I am co-author are

  1. Search for Dark Matter Effects on Gravitational Signals from Neutron Star Mergers. John Ellis, Andi Hektor, Gert Hütsi, Kristjan Kannike, Luca Marzola, Martti Raidal, Ville Vaskonen. arXiv:1710.05540 [astro-ph.CO].
  2. Frame-Independent Classification of Single-Field Inflationary Models. Laur Järv, Kristjan Kannike, Luca Marzola, Martti Raidal, Hardi Veermäe. Phys.Rev.Lett. 118 (2017), 151302. arXiv:1612.07863 [hep-ph].
  3. Vacuum Stability of a General Scalar Potential of a Few Fields. Kristjan Kannike. Eur.Phys.J. C76 (2016), 324. arXiv:1603.07263 [hep-ph].
  4. Relaxion Cosmology and the Price of Fine-Tuning. Stefano di Chiara, Kristjan Kannike, Luca Marzola, Antonio Racioppi, Martti Raidal, Christian Spethmann. Phys.Rev. D93 (2016), 103527. arXiv:1511.02858 [hep-ph].
  5. Dynamically Induced Planck Scale and Inflation. Kristjan Kannike, Gert Hütsi, Liberato Pizza, Antonio Racioppi, Martti Raidal, Alberto Salvio, Alessandro Strumia.JHEP 1505 (2015) 065. arXiv:1502.01334 [astro-ph.CO].
  6. Minimal Semi-Annihilating $\mathbb{Z}_N$ Dark Matter. Geneviève Bélanger, Kristjan Kannike, Alexander Pukhov, Martti Raidal. JCAP 1406 (2014) 021. arXiv:1403.4960 [hep-ph].
  7. Exploring the Higgs Sector of a Most Natural NMSSM. Riccardo Barbieri, Dario Buttazzo, Kristjan Kannike, Filippo Sala, Andrea Tesi. Phys.Rev. D87 (2013), 115018. arXiv:1304.3670 [hep-ph].
  8. The Universal Higgs Fit. Pier Paolo Giardino, Kristjan Kannike, Isabella Masina, Martti Raidal, Alessandro Strumia. JHEP 1405 (2014) 046. arXiv:1303.3570 [hep-ph].
  9. $\mathbb{Z}_3$ Scalar Singlet Dark Matter. Geneviève Bélanger, Kristjan Kannike, Alexander Pukhov, Martti Raidal. JCAP 1301 (2013) 022. arXiv:1211.1014 [hep-ph].
  10. Vacuum Stability Conditions from Copositivity Criteria. Kristjan Kannike. Eur.Phys.J. C72 (2012) 2093. arXiv:1205.3781 [hep-ph].
  11. Implications of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson for Scalar Dark Matter and for the CMSSM Phenomenology. Mario Kadastik, Kristjan Kannike, Antonio Racioppi, Martti Raidal. arXiv:1112.3647 [hep-ph].
  12. Anthropic Solution to the Magnetic Muon Anomaly: the Charged See-Saw. Kristjan Kannike, Martti Raidal, David M. Straub, Alessandro Strumia. arXiv:1111.2551v2 [hep-ph].
  13. Mario Kadastik, Kristjan Kannike, Martti Raidal. Dark Matter as the signal of Grand Unification. Phys.Rev.D80:085020,2009, Erratum-ibid.D81:029903,2010. arXiv:0907.1894 [hep-ph].
  14. Mario Kadastik, Kristjan Kannike, Martti Raidal. Matter parity as the origin of scalar Dark Matter. Phys.Rev.D81:015002,2010. arXiv:0903.2475 [hep-ph].
  15. Thomas Hambye, Kristjan Kannike, Ernest Ma, and Martti Raidal. Emanations of Dark Matter: Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment, Radiative Neutrino Mass, and Novel Leptogenesis at the TeV Scale. Phys.Rev.D75:095003 (2007) arXiv:hep-ph/0609228.
  16. John Ellis, Andi Hektor, Mario Kadastik, Kristjan Kannike, Martti Raidal. Running of Low-Energy Neutrino Masses, Mixing Angles and CP Violation. Phys.Lett. B631 (2005) 32-41. arXiv:hep-ph/0506122.

Translation

For a change, I have translated three books from English into Estonian.

In the suggestive The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard (in Estonian: Unenägude täisühing, Varrak, 2003), a pilot crashes with his plane into Thames and turns, as some Pagan redeemer, a bland London suburb into tropical paradise.

The one and only novel by Carl Sagan, Contact (in Estonian: Kontakt, Varrak, 2006), describes receiving a message from outer space and first contact between the mankind and other civilizations. Unlike most science fiction writers, Sagan knew his topic well as an astronomer and pioneer of SETI, and wrote a novel of good style and believable psychology.

John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, (in Estonian: Jookse, Jänku, Varrak, 2009) shows the changing America of fifties through the life of a former high school basketball ace. The best times are past for Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom and he is seized by disquietness.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (in Estonian: Kitsas tee sisemaale, Varrak, 2017), which won the Man Booker prize, tells the story of an Australian surgeon in a Japanese prison camp and of life cut into half by war.