About Prof Peet

Stylized image of Amanda Peet, done by artist Nitrozac

Prof Peet (by Nitrozac)

Brief CV

Affiliations

My intellectual home base since 2000 is the Physics Department at the University of Toronto. U of T has a college system; I am a Fellow of Trinity College. I currently teach a first-year seminar course offered jointly by Trinity College and the Department of Physics: Modern Physics in Perspective.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, counts me as an Affiliate. By choice, I am a member of the Canadian Association of Physicists, the [Canadian] Institute for Particle Physics and the American Physical Society. I am also serving for 2011-14 on the APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.

Research Interests

My interests are centred around the following topics:-

  • String theory as a theory of quantum gravity; quantum field theory.
  • Applications of fundamental string theory to black holes, gauge theories, and cosmology.
  • Holographic AdS/CFT dualities between large-N gauge field theories and gravitational string theories; phase diagrams; holographic modelling of strongly coupled condensed matter systems.
  • The black hole information paradox and black hole entropy; microscopic string theory models (CFTs) of black holes and branes; the fuzzball approach to black hole information recovery.
  • Branes and other geometries in higher-dimensional gravity.

Research personnel

Current co-workers:

  • Mr Daniel O’Keefe (PhD student)
  • Ms Ida Ghazvini (PhD student)
  • Dr Ben Burrington (Post Doctoral Fellow); moving to a faculty position in Fall 2012.

Past co-workers:

  • Geoffrey Potvin (grad student 2000-6): faculty member at Clemson University.
  • Martin Kruczenski (postdoc 2001-3): faculty member at Purdue University.
  • David C. Page (postdoc 2002-5): in mathematical finance.
  • Omid Saremi (grad student 2002-6): postdoc at Berkeley.
  • Ashish Saxena (postdoc 2004-7); in mathematical finance.
  • Stefano Giusto (postdoc 2006-7); faculty in Italy.
  • Jon Ford (PhD student 2005-9); working in Actuarial Science on Toronto’s Bay Street.

Selected papers

  • “Lifshitz-like black brane thermodynamics in higher dimensions”, with Gaetano Bertoldi, Ben Burrington, and Ida G. Zadeh,  arxiv:1101.1980 [hep-th], submitted to Phys. Rev. D.
  • “Thermal behavior of charged dilatonic black branes in AdS and UV completions of Lifshitz-like geometries”, with Gaetano Bertoldi and Ben Burrington, Phys. Rev. D82 (2010) 106013, arxiv:1007.1464 [hep-th].
  • “Thermodynamics of black branes in asymptotically Lifshitz spacetimes”, with Gaetano Bertoldi and Benjamin A. Burrington (8pp). arXiv:0907.4755 [hep-th]
  • “Black Holes in asymptotically Lifshitz spacetimes with arbitrary critical exponent”, with Gaetano Bertoldi and Benjamin A. Burrington (23pp). arXiv: 0905.3183 [hep-th]
  • “Reduction without reduction: Adding KK-monopoles to five dimensional stationary axisymmetric solutions”, with J.Ford, S.Giusto and A.Saxena, hep-th/0708.3823.
  • “Smooth Geometries with Four Charges in Four Dimensions”, with S.Giusto and G.Potvin and A.Saxena,hep-th/0509214.
  • “Folding Branes”, with O.Saremi and L.Kofman, hep-th/0409092.
  • “The Enhancon and the Consistency of Excision”, with C.V.Johnson, R.C.Myers and S.F.Ross, hep-th/0105077.
  • “TASI Lectures on Black Holes in String Theory”, hep-th/0008241.
  • “Gauge Theory and the Excision of Repulson Singularities”, with C.V. Johnson and J. Polchinski, hep-th/9911161.
  • “UV/IR Relations in AdS Dynamics”, with J. Polchinski, hep-th/9809022.
  • “Entropy and Temperature of Black 3-Branes”, with S.S. Gubser and I.R. Klebanov, hep-th/9602135.
  • “D-Branes and Spinning Black Holes”, with J.C. Breckenridge, R.C. Myers and C. Vafa, hep-th/9602065.

Teaching

I enjoy classroom teaching, including making connections between lecture material and research frontiers. My courses all feature online lecture notes (and have done since 2001). Mentoring/teaching of research personnel is also a high priority. In addition, I have an interest in physics education research, and am always on the lookout for tips for better teaching.

This academic year, I am teaching a year-long frosh undergraduate seminar course PMU199Y and a Spring semester graduate course PHY2404S:-

Equity

Our Department of Physics is strongly committed to fostering an equitable and excellent atmosphere for women – and men. Since arriving at the University of Toronto, I have been involved in gender equity efforts at the departmental, university, national and international level. More recently, I have also developed an interest in equity for people with disabilities. I sit on UofT’s tri-campus AODA Committee on accessibility. In addition, I openly support the UofT Positive Space Campaign. Inclusiveness-building alongside excellence-building is a smart strategy for any workplace, and universities are no exception.

Outreach

I work to bring an appreciation of my research to a wider audience. See e.g. the outreach section of this web site, and the UofT Blue Book of experts.

Last updated: 2012/03/15

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