Stuart Dowker


Telephone:

0161-275-4193

Internet Email:

dowker@a13.ph.man.ac.uk

Address

Room 6.23
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
England
M13 9PL


Research Interests

Effects of nontrivial topology and geometry on quantum theory. The Casimir effect. The Aharonov-Bohm effect. Finite temperature quantum fields in curved spaces. Spectral Geometry.

I don't think you want to read a lot of technical details and so I shall save a lot of bother (for me) by not giving any. I waste enough time writing grant applications for future research and reports on past research. (When do I find time for present research, you ask. Good question.) Suffice it to say that I aim to do what I like, and that generally involves fiddling around trying to find exact solutions for toy situations, preferably those involving pretty mathematics, mostly of the late nineteenth century variety, although I have indulged in some algebraic topology now and then. At the moment my time is taken up with questions in spectral geometry such as `Can one hear the shape of a drum?'

`Applications there are many. (If only that were true, Ken.)'

You could say that my work was mainly mathematical but I do try to give a passing nod to applications. The words `quantum cosmology', `early universe', `finite size effects' and `relevant' spring to mind. In the past, I have worked on the theory of higher-spin particles, functional integrals and the quantum mechanical ordering problem, exactness of the semi-classical approximation, compositeness conditions and on analytical properties of Feynman diagrams. My thesis concerned the absorption of negative K mesons by light nuclei, so you can see how far I have come. I try to keep a watching brief on all these topics, which resurface from time to time and still interest me. If you want to know more, then you can get a much better idea by looking at some of my publications. You have to do some work!



Publications:

Some are on the SLAC-SPIRES database.

Recent preprints on Los Alamos archives hep-th, gr-qc.

References to my work can be found on the BIDS system.



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