Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos | Mark Alaverdian

Mark Alaverdian - - - Graduate Student

Office: 5 Osmond Laboratory

Address: Davey Laboratory, 251 Pollock Road, Box 251

Email: mxa895@psu.edu

Phone: -

My research interests mostly lie within high energy theory and include (but not limited to)

supersymmetric quantum field theories and supergravities
classical gravitational dynamics of binary systems
string theory and holography
conformal field theory

In my current work, I apply the powerful techniques developed in the field of scattering amplitudes to the subjects listed above in various contexts.

Publications

Mark Alaverdian, Aidan Herderschee, Radu Roiban, Fei Teng, "Difference equations and integral families for Witten diagrams." JHEP 12 (2024)

Mark Alaverdian, Zvi Bern, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, Andres Luna, Radu Roiban, Trevor Scheopner, Fei Teng, "Conservative Spin-Magnitude Change in Orbital Evolution in General Relativity." Phys. Rev. Lett. 134 10 (2025)

Mark Alaverdian, Zvi Bern, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, Andres Luna, Radu Roiban, Trevor Scheopner, Fei Teng, "Observables and Unconstrained Spin Tensor Dynamics in General Relativity from Scattering Amplitudes." (2025)

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez, while she was a graduate student at the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC). Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work includes specialized topics in general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds. In particular, her thesis work focused on finding effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams, and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope and variety of research at the IGC. The base of the image represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity. These are among the approaches to fundamental questions studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle of the image represents the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology by galaxies embedded in a smooth surface, characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the much larger physical scales studied in cosmology. Finally, at the top, the surface curves to an extreme, representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet. These elements depict an active galactic nucleus, inspired by Centaurus A. Just to the right, a pair of black holes approaches merger. This top portion of the wordmark represents the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics, which specializes in the study of high-energy phenomena in the universe.