Gary Tupper

About Me

I am currently a Part-Time Lecturer in theoretical physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Cape Town. In mid-2009 I became a member of the PEPT group in Applied Physics and of the Centre for Minerals Research.

Research

One of my areas of interest is in cosmology - in particular the issue of understanding the dark-matter and dark-energy that dominate the structure of our universe. My belief is that one should seek a unified theory for the dark sector. This might take the form of "tachyon condensation" or "ghost condensation", but may ultimately call for a modified gravity theory.

Another area of interest is in testing (yes, that's right, testing) string theory. The idea here is that future observations of the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy (and perhaps also M87) will probe down near the nominal event horizon. Since "string gravity" is different from General Relativity (see the Honours project by Julian Taylor below) there may be observable signatures.

Since joining the PEPT group/CMR I have been working on applying ideas from field theory, disordered systems and critical phenomena to the problem of creating a theory for slurry transport in drum mills to replace the existing ad-hoc models. By the way, if that seems less exciting/important consider this: the operation of those mills consumes 15% of the country's total electricity!

Publications

A listing of my publications can be found on  SPIRES.

One paper Unification of dark matter and dark energy: The Inhomogeneous Chaplygin gas, Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper and Raoul D. Viollier, Phys. Lett. B 535:17-21 (2001) arXiv link, has been cited 419 times. This is one of only six South African physics papers that have gained over 250 citations link.

Here is a list of some of my recent publications and preprints:

1. Cosmological tachyon condensation.
   Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
   Phys. Rev. D 80: 023515 (2009).
   arXiv link
2. Ghost Condensate Busting.
   Neven Bilić, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
   JCAP 0809:002 (2008).
   arXiv link
3. A Symbiotic Scenario for the Rapid Formation of Supermassive Black Holes.
   Max C. Richter, G.B. Tupper, R.D. Viollier.
   JCAP 0612:015 (2006).
   arXiv link
4. Chaplygin Gas Cosmology - Unification of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
   Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
   J. Phys. A 40:6877-6882 (2007).
   arXiv link
5. Born-Infeld Phantom Gravastars.
   Neven Bilic, Gary B. Tupper, Raoul D. Viollier.
   JCAP 0602:013 (2006).
   arXivlink
6. Gauges in the bulkII: Models with bulk scalars.
   J. E. Kim, G. B. Tupper, R. D. Viollier.
   Phys. Lett. B 612:293-303(2005).
   arXiv link

Teaching

I taught these courses at the University of Cape Town:

• 2008, 2009 + 2010 Honours Classical Mechanics
• 2008 Honours General Relativity
• 2010 Electromagnetism to Extended NASSP Honours Students

Recent Projects Supervised

 

• Kosmology (Honours Project by Jamie Gordon)
• Phantom Gravastars (Honours Project by M. Reintjes)
• BHs in Horava-Witten Braneworld (Honours Project by J. Taylor)
• Braneworld BH Lensing (Honours Project by R. Angelil)
• Accretion onto Black Holes (Honours Project by A. van Niekerk)
• Cosmological k-essence (Honours Project by J. Ridl)

 

Lecture Notes

These are lecture notes from a course I gave on the standard model:

1. Introduction
2. Elements of Group Theory
3. Electrodynamics and the Lorentz Group
4. Spinors: Matter
5. Where the Action is
6. Fun with Yang and Mills
7. Symmetry Breaking for the Masses
8. From Action to Answers: Feynman Rules
9. The Standard Electroweak and Strong Interaction Model

Talks

Here are the Powerpoint slides for a talk on modified gravity I gave at the Beyond the Standard Model 2010 conference: slides.

These are the Powerpoint slides from a talk I gave to the physics department on my work in applied physics: slides.