Ian Moss

Professor of Theoretical Cosmology.

Research

My research focuses on fundamental aspects of the big bang and black holes. The most exciting development in my lifetime has been the inflationary model of the very early universe, and the importance of quantum theory in describing the origin of density fluctuations and the origin of the universe. The inflationary model has become the predominant model of the early universe as, one by one, all of its predictions have been comfirmed. Inflation has helped to from a branch of physics, known as `Particle Astrophysics', which is becoming increasingly recognised as a key research area.

One of the goals of Particle Astrophysics is to use the early universe to test the consistency of new developments in particle physics.An example is warm inflation, which seems to be the best model of inflation found so far. New observations of the cosmic microwave background and the large scale structure of the universe have enabled us to make statements about the nature of the universe at extremely early times and high energies. Another example is the five dimensional brane-world cosmology that has arisen from superstring models.

Another exciting research area is the theory of gravitational collapse and black holes. This has lead to several new solutions to Einstein's theory of gravity, including the black hole skyrmion and the superconducting cosmic string spacetime. Examining black hole interiors has lead to new insights into the nature of singularities and wormholes.

There are other lines of work which also appear promising. The first concerns the quantum interaction of solitons which shows new universal phenomena. The new effects can be considered in the context of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, where they appear as correction terms to the potential depending only on geometry. The second line of work, on the asymptotics of quasinormal modes, has applications ranging from gravity wave sources through to new acoustic sensing techniques.

Roles and responsibilities

• EPSRC Peer Review College member
• IOP Theoretical and Mathematical Physics Group Committee member

Postgraduate notes

• Various decompositions of Einstein's equations
• Qauntum Fields in Curved Spactimes
• Anomalies
• Mathematical formulae which are useful for

Conference talks

• UKCOSMO-04 (Edinburgh 2004): Observational constraints on warm inflation
• COSMO-03 (Ambleside 2003): Warm Inflation and the CMB
• Hawking 60th (Cambridge 2002): Zeta Functions and branes
• Quantum Gravity (Naples 2001): Can you hear the shape of a bell?

Seminars

Selected papers

• I. G. Moss, ``Boundary terms for 11-dimensional supergravity and M theory hep-th/0308159

• L. M. H. Hall, I. G. Moss and A Berera, ``Density perturbations from warm inflation'' astro-ph/0305015

• I. G. Moss, W. Naylor, W. Santiago-German and M Sasaki, ``Bulk quantum effects for de Sitter branes in AdS(5)'' Phys Rev D67 125010 2003

• I. G. Moss and J. P. Norman, ``Gravitational quasinormal modes for AdS black holes'' Class Quantum Grav 19 2323 2002

• A. Flachi, I. G. Moss and D. J. Toms, ``Quantized bulk fermions in the Randall-Sundrum brane model'' Phys Rev D64 105029 (2001)

Some golden oldies

• I. G. Moss, ``Black hole thermodynamics and quantum hair'', Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 1852 (1992)

• I. G. Moss and W. A. Wright, ``The wave function of the inflationary universe", Phys. Rev. D29, 1067 (1984)

• S. W. Hawking and I. G. Moss, ``Fluctuations in the very early universe", Nucl. Phys. B224, 180 (1983)

• S. W. Hawking, I. G. Moss and J. M. Stewart, ``Bubble collisions in the very early universe", Phys. Rev. D25, 2681 (1982)

• S. W. Hawking and I. G. Moss, ``Supercooled phase transitions in the very early universe", Phys. Lett. B110, 35 (1982)

Email:

ian.moss@ncl.ac.uk