Professor Richard Easther

Head of Department

In: Physics » Faculty of Science

Biography

I grew up in New Zealand, and was educated at the University of Canterbury. After graduating with my PhD 1994 I held post-doctoral fellowships at Waseda University in Japan and at Brown and Columbia Universities in the United States.

I was a professor at Yale University from 2004 until the end of 2011, when I returned to New Zealand. I am now a professor and Head of the Department of Physics here at the University of Auckland.

Research | Current

My work focuses on the physics of the very early universe. I explore the cosmological implications of string theory and the inflationary epoch, a period of accelerated expansion immediately after the big bang thought to set the stage for the subsequent evolution of the universe.

I am interested in the evolution of the universe during the "primordial dark ages" between the end of inflation and the nucleosynthesis era, a period a few minutes after the big bang when chemical elements more complicated than hydrogen are first formed.

The growth of cosmological perturbations during this phase depends on the nature of dark matter and other phenomena outside the "standard model" of particle physics, allowing cosmology to reveal unknown particle physics.

Research areas

The physics of the very early universe
Inflationary cosmology
The cosmological implications of string theory
The multiverse and eternal inflation
Astrophysical tests of models of the early universe
Dark matter and cosmological observables

Selected publications and creative works (Research Outputs)

Barausse, E., Berti, E., Hertog, T., Hughes, S. A., Jetzer, P., Pani, P., ... Yagi, K. (2020). Prospects for fundamental physics with LISA. GENERAL RELATIVITY AND GRAVITATION, 52 (8)10.1007/s10714-020-02691-1
Barausse, E., Berti, E., Hertog, T., Hughes, S. A., Jetzer, P., Pani, P., ... Yagi, K. (2020). Prospects for fundamental physics with LISA. General Relativity and Gravitation, 52 (8).10.1007/s10714-020-02691-1
Padmanabhan, N., Ronaghan, E., Zagorac, J. L., & Easther, R. (2020). Simulating ultralight dark matter in Chapel. Proceedings - 2020 IEEE 34th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops, IPDPSW 2020. 10.1109/IPDPSW50202.2020.00120
Aslanyan, G., Easther, R., Musoke, N., & Price, L. C. (2020). Robust posterior inference when statistically emulating forward simulations. Arxiv Related URL.
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Nathan Musoke
Musoke, N., Hotchkiss, S., & Easther, R. (2020). Lighting the Dark: Evolution of the Postinflationary Universe. Physical review letters, 124 (6)10.1103/physrevlett.124.061301
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Nathan Musoke, Shaun Hotchkiss
Kendall, E., & Easther, R. (2020). The core-cusp problem revisited: ULDM vs. CDM. PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA, 3710.1017/pasa.2020.3
Niemeyer, J. C., & Easther, R. (2019). Inflaton Clusters and Inflaton Stars. Arxiv Related URL.
Zagorac, J. L., Easther, R., & Padmanabhan, N. (2019). GUT-scale primordial black holes: Mergers and gravitational waves. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (6)10.1088/1475-7516/2019/06/052