I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Caltech Particle Theory Group, in the Department of Physics. My research is conducted at the intersection between cosmology and particle physics, with a focus on early-universe cosmology and quantum gravity. My advisor is Sean Carroll. I was previously an undergraduate at Princeton University, where I did my senior thesis research with Paul Steinhardt.
Beginning in Fall 2017, I will be a postdoctoral fellow in Mark Van Raamsdonk's group at the University of British Columbia.
Publications
- S.M. Carroll, S. Leichenauer, and J. Pollack, 2013, "A Consistent Effective Theory of Long-Wavelength Cosmological Perturbations," Phys. Rev. D 90, 023518 (2014); arXiv:1310.2920.
- K.K. Boddy, S.M. Carroll, and J. Pollack, 2014, "De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations," Found. Phys., 46, 702 (2016); arXiv:1405.0298.
- J. Pollack, D.N. Spergel, and P.J. Steinhardt, 2015, "Supermassive Black Holes from Ultra-Strongly Self-Interacting Dark Matter," Astrophys. J. 804, 131 (2015); arXiv:1501.00017.
- N. Bao, C. Cao, S.M. Carroll, A. Chatwin-Davies, N. Hunter-Jones, J. Pollack, and G.N. Remmen, 2015, "Consistency Conditions for an AdS/MERA Correspondence," Phys. Rev. D 91, 125036 (2015); arXiv:1504.06632.
- K.K. Boddy, S.M. Carroll, and J. Pollack, 2015, "Why Boltzmann Brains Don't Fluctuate Into Existence From the De Sitter Vacuum," to appear in proceedings of The Philosophy of Cosmology, K. Chamcham, ed.; arXiv:1505.02780.
- N. Bao, J. Pollack, and G.N. Remmen, 2015, "Splitting Spacetime and Cloning Qubits: Linking No-Go Theorems across the ER=EPR Duality," Fortschr. Phys. 63, 705 (2015); arXiv:1506.08203.
- A. Bartolotta, S.M. Carroll, S. Leichenauer, and J. Pollack, 2015, "The Bayesian Second Law of Thermodynamics," Phys. Rev. E 94, 022102 (2016); arXiv:1508.02421.
- N. Bao, J. Pollack, and G.N. Remmen, 2015, "Wormhole and Entanglement (Non-)Detection in the ER=EPR Correspondence," JHEP, 2015, 126; arXiv:1509.05426.
- N. Bao, J. Pollack, and G.N. Remmen, 2016, "Entanglement Conservation, ER=EPR, and a New Classical Area Theorem for Wormholes," JHEP, 2016, 48; arXiv:1604.08217.
- N. Bao, A. Bouland, A. Chatwin-Davies, J. Pollack, and H. Yuen, 2016, "Rescuing Complementarity With Little Drama," JHEP, 2016, 26; arXiv:1607.05141.
- K.K. Boddy, S.M. Carroll, and J. Pollack, 2016, "How Decoherence Affects the Probability of Slow-Roll Eternal Inflation," Phy. Rev. D 96, 023539 (2017); arXiv:1612.04894.
Undergraduate Work
- Undergraduate Fall Junior Paper: Dynamical Selection of the Cosmological 'Constant' in the Cyclic Model (advisor: Paul Steinhardt)
- Undergraduate Spring Junior Paper: Parameter Estimation of Selected ACT Clusters from X-Ray and Radio Observations (advisor: Lyman Page)
- Undergraduate Senior Thesis: Supermassive Black Holes from Gravothermal Collapse of Fractional Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos (advisor: Paul Steinhardt)