About me

Jonathan Pearson's Facebook profileMy name is Jonathan Pearson. I am also known as Jon or JP (depending on who you talk to). I currently spend most of my time at Manchester University, doing a PhD in theoretical cosmology. I help out with stuff at IvyManchester church, churchinaclub and Ivy's youth and kids work.

Non-physics stuff I do

Other than physics (its not like physics actually takes up my whole life), I like to do other things.
I'm also a christian, I go to IvyManchester church in Didsbury. I help out at Lee Abbey Youth Camps and at the youth group at IvyManchester: Thirst. Being a christian and physicist is quite interesting, presenting lots of ways to challenge my faith - making life a little more dynamic!

Did you know that the guy who invented the Big Bang theory was a Priest?

music: cinematic orchestra, two door cinema club, bonobo, ian dury, bon iver, elbow, herbaliser, moby, faithless, telepopmusik, dave brubeck quartet, adele, william orbit, jamiroquai, pink floyd, david bowie, bell x1, william fitzsimmons, fleet foxes, plan b, stornoway, bombay bicycle club, orbital, michael buble, massive attack...
books: one flew over the cuckoos nest, clockwork orange, 1984, frankenstein, animal farm, brave new world, do androids dream of electric sheep?, k-pax, bourne, fight club, mindstar rising...

What I'm up to (physics)

I have a Masters in Theoretical Physics, from the University of Manchester. I am now doing a PhD, at the University of Manchester, under the supervision of Dr.Richard Battye. I am doing a mixture of analytical and numerical work in theoretical cosmology. My research interests lie in models of dark energy, inhomogeneous universes, topological solitons, graph theories, modified gravity. Among other things, I am trying to construct stable gauged cosmic vortons, study naked singularities in cosmological models of the universe and constructing a general formalism for parameterizing modified gravity.

Teaching etc I am a "teaching assistant" at the University - I give tutorials to groups of 5 students: Maths 1, Maths 2, Electricity and Magnetism, Dynamics, Introduction to Astronomy and Cosmology, Data Analysis, Properties of Matter. I supervised a student in summer 2011 and (unofficially) supervise two MPhys students for the academic year 2011-12.

My masters project

My masters project was entitled "The dynamics of charged domain walls"; it is supervised by Dr.R.Battye and was in collaboration with Simon Pike.

We investigate the dynamics of a class topological defects known as domain walls. We consider models with interacting fields with junctions and charge, possessing a O(N)xU(1) symmetry with cubic anisotropy terms. We find that a phase separation is possible, between domain and charge, and that if phase separation occurs, domain walls do not scale. This is a more general case of our finding that kinky vortons form from random initial conditions, preventing walls from scaling, in the regime where symmetry currents associate with domain walls.

If you want to read my MPhys report, download it by clicking here (4MB). If you want a better quality version, send me a message. Do not copy or use any portion of this work!

My CV

Click here to download my CV.