Bret Underwood
Assistant Professor of Physics
- Professional
- Personal
- Video
Education
- Ph.D., Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008
- M.A., Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006
- B.S. Magna Cum Laude, Physics, The Ohio State University, 2003
Areas of Emphasis or Expertise
- Cosmology
- Particle Physics
- String Theory
Selected Presentations
- Pacific Lutheran University, String Cosmology: Connecting the Physics of the Very-Big and the Very-Small, Tacoma, WA (March 2011)
- University of Winnipeg, String Cosmology: Connecting the Physics of the Very-Big and the Very-Small, Winnipeg, Canada (March 2011)
- Seminar, Perimeter Institute, A Breathing Mode for Warped Compactifications, Waterloo, Canada (March 2011)
- String Vacuum Project, A Breathing Mode for Warped Compactifications, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH (November 2010)
- Seminar, SPOCK Workshop, A Dynamical Landscape, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH (April 2010)
Selected Articles
- J. Karouby, B. Underwood, A. Vincent. "Preheating with the Brakes On: The Effects of a Speed Limit." Preheating with the Brakes On: The Effects of a Speed Limit, Physical Review D84 043528 (2011), arXiv: 1105.3982 [hep-th]
- B. Underwood. "A Breathing Mode for Warped Compactifications." Classical and Quantum Gravity 28 , 195013 (2011), arXiv: 1009.4200 [hep-th]
- P. Franche, R. Gwyn, B. Underwood and A. Wissanji. "Initial Conditions for Non-Canonical Inflation." Physical Review D82 , 063528 (2010), arXiv:1002.2639 [hep-th]
- P. Franche, R. Gwyn, B. Underwood and A. Wissanji. "Attractive Lagrangians for Non-Canonical Inflation." Physical Review D81 , 123526 (2010), arXiv:0912.1857 [hep-th]
- S. Horibe and B. Underwood. "Making connections to the ‘real world’: a model building lesson." Physics Education 44 (2009) 633-638
Accolades
- Institute for Particle Physics (IPP) Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2008-2011
- McGill Lorne Trottier Fellowship, 2008-2010
- Lesson Study Curriculum Development Grant, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 2007
- “Exceptional Service” TA award (Campus-wide) at UW-Madison, 2007
Biography
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Physics at Pacific Lutheran University. My research interests are in the intersection of high energy physics and cosmology. From 2008-2011 I was a postdoctoral researcher in Theoretical High Energy Physics and Cosmology at McGill University. While there, I was a McGill Lorne Trottier and Institute of Particle Physics (IPP) Postdoctoral Fellow.
I obtained my Bachelor of Science in Physics at The Ohio State University in 2003, completing a senior research project entitled “Renormalization of the n-dimensional Delta function potential” under the direction of Professor Robert Perry.
In 2003 I began my graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a Masters of Arts in Physics in 2005 and a Ph.D. in 2008 as a student of Gary Shiu. My Ph.D. thesis, entitled “Warped String Phenomenology: Topics in Cosmology and Particle Physics”, focused on the interesting phenomenological and cosmological implications of warped extra dimensions, which commonly appear in string theory models.
Physics@PLU