Mark Trodden
{{Short description|English physicist (born 1968)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Mark Trodden
| image = MarkTrodden.jpg
| image_size = 219px
| caption = Trodden on Bloggingheads.tv
| birth_date = {{start date and age|1968}}
| birth_place = Wigan, England
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| field = Physics
| work_institution = University of Pennsylvania
Syracuse University
| alma_mater = Cambridge University
Brown University
| doctoral_advisor = Robert Brandenberger
| doctoral_students =
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| prizes =
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Mark Trodden (born 1968) is a theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist. He is Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Physics & Astronomy and began his tenure as Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences{{Cite web |title=Penn School of Arts & Sciences |url=https://www.sas.upenn.edu/about/administration/trodden |url-status=live}} at the University of Pennsylvania{{cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=Penn Physics & Astronomy: Mark Trodden |url=http://www.physics.upenn.edu/people/m.trodden.html |access-date=2009-01-10 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania}} in June 2025. A faculty member since 2009, Trodden previously co-directed the Center for Particle Cosmology, chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2014 to 2022, and served as Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences from 2023 to 2025.
Education and career
Trodden received both his Bachelor (mathematics) degree and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (Part III) from Cambridge University.{{cite web|last=Trodden |first=Mark |title=Mark Trodden : Personal Page |url=http://physics.syr.edu/~trodden/personal/index.html |access-date=2008-07-24 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070502151711/http://physics.syr.edu/~trodden/personal/index.html |archive-date=May 2, 2007 }} He subsequently spent a year doing research and supervising undergraduates at Cambridge University. In 1992, Trodden moved to the United States to enter the Ph.D. program at Brown University and obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1995. He worked as a Research Associate for two years at MIT and two years at Case Western Reserve University after getting his Ph.D. From 2000 to 2009, Trodden was a faculty member at Syracuse University, holding the Alumni Professorship from 2005 to 2009.
Research
Mark Trodden's main research areas are the cosmological implications of Quantum Field Theories, General Relativity, and Superstring Theories. Trodden, with Sean Carroll, introduced a new class of topological defects in ordinary field theories. Trodden's work in theoretical studies and understanding of the early universe has been widely cited and relied upon by the scientific community.{{cite web
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| title = INSPIRE-HEP
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| url = http://inspirehep.net/search?p=find+ea+trodden,+mark
| access-date = 2008-07-25 }}
Specifically, Trodden's research focuses on configurations consisting of topological solitons which end on others of equal or higher dimension. In such models, the higher-dimensional defect provides Dirichlet boundary conditions for the lower dimensional one.
Trodden, with his co-workers Anne-Christine Davis and Steven Davis, has also investigated the particle physics and cosmological properties of topological defects in supersymmetic theories. Their first study, dealing with abelian theories demonstrated that all spontaneously broken abelian supersymmetric theories admit cosmic string solutions which are superconducting due to fermion zero modes. Further, by using supersymmetry transformations, they showed how to calculate the supercurrents in terms of the background string fields. They also managed to extend these results to non-abelian theories and investigated the effects of soft supersymmetry breaking.{{cite web
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| title = Physics at Syracuse
| publisher = Syracuse University Physics Department
| date = 2004
| url = http://physics.syr.edu/FTGElementary.htm
| access-date = 2008-07-24
| archive-date = 7 October 2013
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131007062139/http://physics.syr.edu/FTGElementary.htm
| url-status = dead
}}
Trodden describes himself as a "particle cosmologist."{{cite web
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| title = Mark
| publisher = Cosmic Variance
| date = 2008
| url = http://cosmicvariance.com/mark/
| access-date = 2008-07-24
| archive-date = 7 October 2008
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081007013045/http://cosmicvariance.com/mark/
| url-status = dead
}}
Academic papers
- {{cite journal | last1=Carroll | first1=Sean M. | last2=Duvvuri | first2=Vikram | last3=Trodden | first3=Mark | last4=Turner | first4=Michael S. | title=Is cosmic speed-up due to new gravitational physics? | journal=Physical Review D | publisher=American Physical Society (APS) | volume=70 | issue=4 | date=2004-08-23 | issn=1550-7998 | doi=10.1103/physrevd.70.043528 | page=043528|arxiv=astro-ph/0306438v2| bibcode=2004PhRvD..70d3528C | s2cid=44213401 }}
- {{cite journal | last1=Carroll | first1=Sean M. | last2=Hoffman | first2=Mark | last3=Trodden | first3=Mark | title=Can the dark energy equation-of-state parameterw be less than −1? | journal=Physical Review D | publisher=American Physical Society (APS) | volume=68 | issue=2 | date=2003-07-10 | issn=0556-2821 | doi=10.1103/physrevd.68.023509 | page=023509|arxiv=astro-ph/0301273v2| bibcode=2003PhRvD..68b3509C | s2cid=118956653 }}
- {{cite journal | last1=Melchiorri | first1=Alessandro | last2=Mersini | first2=Laura | last3=Ödman | first3=Carolina J. | last4=Trodden | first4=Mark | title=The state of the dark energy equation of state | journal=Physical Review D | publisher=American Physical Society (APS) | volume=68 | issue=4 | date=2003-08-12 | issn=0556-2821 | doi=10.1103/physrevd.68.043509 | page=043509|arxiv=astro-ph/0211522v3| bibcode=2003PhRvD..68d3509M | s2cid=119460205 }}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://physics.syr.edu/~trodden/ Mark Trodden's personal website]
- [https://archive.today/20121215023252/http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+trodden&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= Mark Trodden's papers in the INSPIRE-HEP database]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20090824230203/http://bloggingheads.tv/search/?participant1=Trodden,%20Mark Videos (with mp3s available) of discussions on physics/cosmology with Trodden] on Bloggingheads.tv
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Category:Syracuse University faculty
Category:21st-century British physicists
Category:21st-century science writers
Category:British theoretical physicists