Gary B. Tupper
Department of Physics,
University of Cape Town
About Me
I am currently a Part-Time Lecturer in theoretical physics at
the Department of
Physics of the University
of Cape
Town. In mid-2009 I became a member of the PEPT group in Applied Physics and
of the Centre for Minerals Research.
Research
One of my areas of interest is in cosmology - in particular the issue of understanding the dark-matter
and dark-energy that dominate the structure of our universe. My belief is that one should seek a
unified theory for the dark sector. This might take the form of "tachyon condensation" or "ghost condensation", but may ultimately call for a
modified gravity theory.
Another area of interest is in testing (yes, that's right, testing) string theory. The idea
here is that future observations of the super-massive black hole at the centre of our
galaxy (and perhaps also M87) will probe down near the nominal event horizon. Since "string gravity" is different from General Relativity
(see the Honours project by Julian Taylor below) there may be observable signatures.
Since joining the PEPT group/CMR I have been working on applying ideas from field theory, disordered systems and critical phenomena to the problem of
creating a theory for slurry transport in drum mills to replace the existing ad-hoc models. By the way, if that seems less exciting/important consider
this: the operation of those mills consumes 15% of the country's total electricity!
Publications
A listing of my publications can be found on SPIRES.
One paper Unification
of dark matter and dark energy: The Inhomogeneous
Chaplygin gas, Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper and Raoul D.
Viollier, Phys. Lett. B 535:17-21
(2001) arXiv link, has been cited 419 times.
This is one of only six South African physics papers that
have gained over 250 citations link.
Here is a list of some of my recent publications and preprints:
- Cosmological
tachyon condensation.
Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul
D. Viollier.
Phys. Rev. D 80: 023515 (2009).
arXiv
link
- Ghost
Condensate Busting.
Neven Bilić, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
JCAP 0809:002 (2008).
arXiv
link
- A Symbiotic
Scenario for the Rapid Formation of
Supermassive Black Holes.
Max C. Richter, G.B. Tupper, R.D. Viollier.
JCAP 0612:015 (2006).
arXiv
link
- Chaplygin
Gas Cosmology - Unification of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
J. Phys. A 40:6877-6882
(2007).
arXiv
link
- Born-Infeld Phantom Gravastars.
Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
JCAP 0602:013
(2006).
arXivlink
-
Gauges in the bulkII: Models with bulk scalars.
J. E. Kim, G. B. Tupper, R. D. Viollier.
Phys. Lett. B 612:293-303(2005).
arXiv
link
Teaching
I taught these courses at the University of Cape Town:
- 2008, 2009 + 2010 Honours Classical Mechanics
- 2008 Honours General Relativity
- 2010 Electromagnetism to Extended NASSP Honours Students
Recent Projects Supervised
Lecture Notes
These are lecture notes from a course I gave on the standard model:
- Introduction
- Elements of
Group Theory
- Electrodynamics
and the Lorentz Group
- Spinors: Matter
- Where the
Action is
- Fun with Yang
and Mills
- Symmetry
Breaking for the Masses
- From Action to
Answers: Feynman Rules
- The Standard Electroweak and Strong Interaction Model
Talks
Here are the Powerpoint slides for a talk on modified gravity I gave at the Beyond the Standard Model 2010 conference: slides.
These are the Powerpoint slides from a talk I gave to the physics department on my work in applied physics: slides.
Contact
Email:
Gary.Tupper__NOSPAM__@uct.ac.za
Phone:
+27-21-650-3326
Office: Room 425
R.W. James Physics Building
Upper Campus
University of Cape Town
Cape Town
South Africa
