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 am 22 years old. I currently spend most of my time at Manchester University, doing a PhD in theoretical cosmology. I do quite a lot with, and at, IvyManchester church in Didsbury. For 2 weeks of the year, usually in the end of August, you will find me ankle-deep in mud, in a field in North Devon: Lee Abbey Youth Camps.

Non-physics stuff I do

Other than physics (its not like physics actually takes up my whole life), I like to do various other things. Some of them stupid, some a little more tame.
I'm also a christian, I go to IvyManchester church in Didsbury. Linked to the christian-theme, I lead at Lee Abbey Youth Camps (also being their website manager) and help out at the youth group at IvyManchester: Ignition. Being a christian and physicist is quite interesting, presenting lots of ways to challenge my faith - making life a little more dynamic!
Music also takes up quite a bit of my time: I play bass guitar, playing in various bands (including for a fortnight at Lee Abbey Youth Camp). Buying CD's is something of a vice for me; I like to listen to quite a variety of music, anything thats any good: jazz, funk, chill-out, acoustic. To be honest, if your still reading this guff, you are a little bit weird.

What I'm up to (physics)

I finished studying for the degree of Masters in Theoretical Physics, at the University of Manchester. I am now doing a PhD, at the University of Manchester, under the supervision of Dr.Battye (also my MPhys supervisor), studying theoretical cosmology; where I am doing a mixture of theoretical and numerical work. My research interests lie in models of dark energy, inhomogeneous universes, topological solitons, graph theories. Among other things, I am trying to construct stable gauged cosmic vortons (closed strings with electric charge), models of the universe accelerated by black holes rather than an "invented" component called dark energy and other phenomenology that follows from general relativity.

My masters project

My masters project was entitled "The dynamics of charged domain walls"; it is supervised by Dr.R.Battye; and I am working with Simon Pike. The abstract is as follows:

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.