College of Science

John Peterson

Assistant Professor of Physics
E-mail: contact me
Office: Physics 361
Telephone: (765) 494-5193
Fax: (765) 494-0706
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B.A., Physics, University of Chicago, 1997
M.A., Physics, Columbia University, 1999
M.Phil., Physics, Columbia University, 2000
Ph.D., Physics, Columbia University, 2003

Research Interests:

· Observational cosmology: studies of dark energy and dark matter
· High Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy
· X-ray Emission from Clusters of Galaxies
· Cooling Flows in Clusters of Galaxies
· Surveys of Clusters of Galaxies
· The Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories
· Optical and X-ray Astrophysics Instrumentation
· Weak Gravitational Lensing of Clusters and Large Scale Structure
· Optical Astrophysics Simulation
· Advanced Multivariate Monte Carlo Data Analysis Techniques
· The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

Professional History

· 2006- Assistant Professor, Purdue University
· 2003-2006 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Stanford University/SLAC
· 1997-2003 Graduate Research Assistant, Columbia University

Selected Refereed Publications

  1. "X-ray Spectroscopy of Cooling Clusters", J. R. Peterson & A. C. Fabian 2005, Physics Reports 427, 1.
  2. "Smoothed Particle Inference: A Kilo-Parametric Method for X-ray Cluster Modeling", J. R. Peterson, P. Marshall, & K. Andersson 2005, ApJ Submitted.
  3. "Multivariate Monte Carlo Methods for the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on XMM-Newton", J. R. Peterson, J. G. Jernigan, & S. M. Kahn 2004, ApJ 615, 545.
  4. "High Resolution X-ray Spectroscopic Constraints on Cooling-Flow Models for Clusters of Galaxies", J. R. Peterson et al., 2003, ApJ 590, 270.
  5. "X-ray Imaging Spectroscopy of Abell 1835'', J. R. Peterson et al., 2001, A&A 365, 101.
  6. "The Reflection Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton", J. W. den Herder et al. 2001, A&A 365, 7.
  7. "Search for Long-Lived Parents of Z0 Bosons in p bar p Collisions at Sqrt s=1.8 TeV", F. Abe et al, 1998, Phys. Rev. D 58.
  8. "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope", Dark Energy Task Force Submission, http://www.lsst.org/~Science/DETF.shtml.
  9. "An X-ray Galaxy Cluster Survey for Investigations of Dark Energy", Haiman et al. 2005, Dark Energy Task Force Submission, astro-ph/050713.