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)

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
Shandera, S., Adshead, P., Amin, M., Dimastrogiovanni, E., Dvorkin, C., Easther, R., ... Hanany, S. (2019). Probing the origin of our Universe through cosmic microwave background constraints on gravitational waves. Arxiv Related URL.
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/47671
Edwards, F., Kendall, E., Hotchkiss, S., & Easther, R. (2018). PyUltraLight: a pseudo-spectral solver for ultralight dark matter dynamics. JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS (10)10.1088/1475-7516/2018/10/027
Musoke, N., & Easther, R. (2017). Expectations for inflationary observables: simple or natural?. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2017 (12), 032-032. 10.1088/1475-7516/2017/12/032
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/42442
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Nathan Musoke
Aslanyan, G., Price, L. C., Adams, J., Bringmann, T., Clark, H. A., Easther, R., ... Scott, P. (2016). Ultracompact minihalos as probes of inflationary cosmology. Physical Review Letters, 117 (14).10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.141102
Canac, N., Aslanyan, G., Abazajian, K. N., Easther, R., & Price, L. C. (2016). Testing for new physics: Neutrinos and the primordial power spectrum. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016 (09)10.1088/1475-7516/2016/09/022
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/36413
Price, L. C., Peiris, H. V., Frazer, J., & Easther, R. (2016). Designing and testing inflationary models with Bayesian networks. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016 (02), 049-049. 10.1088/1475-7516/2016/02/049
Aslanyan, G., Easther, R., & Price, L. C. (2015). Learn-as-you-go acceleration of cosmological parameter estimates. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2015 (9).10.1088/1475-7516/2015/09/005
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/28448