Mr. Peter Taylor

Dr. Peter Taylor is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Relativity (CfAR) in the School of Mathematical Sciences. He graduated with a degree in Mathematical Sciences from UCD in 2006, winning scholarships to Cambridge University to pursue a masters in Theoretical Physics (Part III of the Tripos). Having obtained a Distinction in Part III, he returned to UCD on an Irish Research Scholarship, completing his PhD in 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Adrian Ottewill. From 2011-2014, he held an assistant professorship at the School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin. He then moved to upstate New York where he was a Marie Curie research fellow at Cornell University. In 2016, he returned to Dublin, taking up his current position at DCU where he continues to teach mathematics and research in the area of black hole physics.

Research Interests

My research is mainly concerned with classical and quantum

aspects of black holes. From a quantum perspective, I am interested in

quantum field theory in curved spacetimes and the associated

theory of semi-classical gravity. The most famous prediction

of this approximation--and one of the most surprising and far-reaching

predictions of theoretical physics--is that black holes emit

quantum thermal radiation, the so-called Hawking effect. On

the classical front, I'm interested in the problem of motion

in General Relativity including strong self-interaction

effects. This is particularly important for modeling binary

black hole systems where one black hole is much larger than

the other, a key astrophysical source of

gravitational waves being targeted by the European

Space Agency's eLISA mission.

Teaching Interests

Mathematics
Mathematics Teacher Education (in particular Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Geometry and Calculus)
General Relativity, Differential Geometry and Quantum Field Theory