Steuard Jensen

117 Keck Science Center
Office hours: M 1:30-3:30; T 3-4; W 10:30-11:30, 4:30-5:30; Th 3-4
Physics 31 class page    Physics 115 class page

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics at the Joint Science Department at the Claremont Colleges (serving CMC, Pitzer, and Scripps). I got my Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Chicago, studying string theory under Jeff Harvey. As an undergraduate, I majored in Physics and Math at Harvey Mudd College (also in Claremont); my thesis there was on general relativity. For those who are interested, my current CV, statement of research interests and proposed undergraduate student projects, and teaching philosophy statement are available in PDF format.

As described on my research page, much of my work in string theory has related to non-perturbative effects. In a project with Jeff Harvey, I studied "non-geometrical" corrections to the Kaluza-Klein monopole in string theory induced by worldsheet instanton effects. (Our first results were published on arXiv.org as hep-th/0507204, and in the Journal of High Energy Physics as JHEP10(2005)028. I have written an overview for non-specialists that is at a fairly low level.) I am currently working to relate our results to Hull's "doubled geometry" formalism. In unrelated recent work with Eduard Antonyan, Jeff Harvey, and David Kutasov, I studied chiral symmetry breaking (specifically, a non-local analogue of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio field theory) using string holography (arXiv:hep-th/0604017). Both of these topics suggest fruitful directions for further work, and I am interested in a variety of other topics in M-theory and string theory as well.

I also have an interest in physics teaching and outreach. In my current position, I am teaching a calculus-based general physics course (and an associated lab) aimed largely at biology majors and premedical students. I am also teaching statistical mechanics (not quite so many premedical students there). Although my focus in graduate school was on research, I found opportunities to teach there as well: in addition to occasional duties as a TA running lab and discussion sections at various levels, I was asked to lead review sessions for students preparing for the Ph.D. candidacy exam and for the physics GRE. Asn an undergraduate, I was a popular (volunteer) physics tutor for students at all levels.

As for outreach, in 2003 I gave a brief speech on the value of science at the Chicago ARCS Foundation annual scholarship luncheon; the text is available here. The ARCS luncheons and other activities of the Foundation also gave me the opportunity to present posters describing my research to non-scientists many times over several years. In 2004, I gave a talk to the Chicago chapter of the MIT alumni club entitled "An Introduction to String Theory". Finally, on the web, my teaching page includes tutorial articles on various topics; my Lagrange multipliers tutorial in particular seems to be rather popular. As mentioned above, I also try to provide descriptions of my research that are accessible to non-physicists.

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Write to me: sjensen@jsd.claremont.edu
Copyright © 2005-7 by Steuard Jensen.