I am a theoretical physicist and cosmologist working as an assistant teaching professor at the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University.
     My research explores two extremes of nature:   the world of particle physics, which seeks to understand the smallest, most fundamental constituents of nature and the forces among them, and the evolution of the cosmos as a whole.   These two extremes merge during the first instants of the universe, when the high temperatures and densities that existed then mean that the laws of the subatomic world become increasingly more relevant the farther back in time one looks.

INSPIRE Listings: [publications]
[author page]

Research Interests

     I have recently been studying how to apply some of the ideas of effective field theory to the treatment of initial states, as well as the related problem of how to set up a general initial state in a quantum field theory.
     I have also been examining the properties of quantum field theories in a rapidly expanding universe.   Inflation—a theory for the origin of the first inhomogeneities in the universe—crucially relies on the quantum properties of space-time during a stage of explosive expansion, so it is important to understand this extreme regime of nature.
     Before this research, I investigated problems in elementary particle physics—the phenomenology of top-color theories, the mass-splittings of baryons, and (much more extensively) the properties of the Randall-Sundrum proposal for explaining the great difference between the strength gravity and that of the other fundamental forces.

     All of my research articles can be found through the ‘Articles’ item in the menu to the left, while my professional lectures are accessible through the ‘Seminars’ listing.

     The ‘Courses’ page contains outlines of some of the courses that I have recently taught.   These pages just list the topics that were covered week by week; the problem sets, tests, etc. are indended for the students of these courses so they are not available here.

Where else I have been

Princeton University
(where I was an undergraduate)

Harvard University
(where I completed my Ph.D. degree)

University of Toronto,
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Massachusetts
Niels Bohr International Academy
(where I worked as a post-doctoral researcher)

Contact

‘hcollins’ followed by ‘andrew’ . ‘cmu’ . ‘edu’