Paul Townsend

28.4k total citations · 3 hit papers
236 papers, 14.3k citations indexed

About

Paul Townsend is a scholar working on Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics. According to data from OpenAlex, Paul Townsend has authored 236 papers receiving a total of 14.3k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 204 papers in Nuclear and High Energy Physics, 130 papers in Statistical and Nonlinear Physics and 113 papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Recurrent topics in Paul Townsend's work include Black Holes and Theoretical Physics (200 papers), Cosmology and Gravitation Theories (107 papers) and Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories (104 papers). Paul Townsend is often cited by papers focused on Black Holes and Theoretical Physics (200 papers), Cosmology and Gravitation Theories (107 papers) and Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories (104 papers). Paul Townsend collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, United States and Spain. Paul Townsend's co-authors include Eric Bergshoeff, P. van Nieuwenhuizen, Germán Sierra, Ana Achúcarro, Paul Howe, Murat Günaydin, Ergin Sezgin, Olaf Hohm, G. W. Gibbons and Kostas Skenderis and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Physical Review Letters and Nuclear Physics B.

In The Last Decade

Paul Townsend

233 papers receiving 13.8k citations

Hit Papers

A Chern-Simons action for three-dimensional anti-de Sitte... 1986 2026 1999 2012 1986 2009 1987 200 400 600
What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

  1. A Chern-Simons action for three-dimensional anti-de Sitter supergravity theories
    1986 696 citations Paul Townsend et al. profile →
  2. Massive Gravity in Three Dimensions
    2009 536 citations Eric Bergshoeff, Olaf Hohm et al. Physical Review Letters profile →
  3. Supermembranes and eleven-dimensional supergravity
    1987 465 citations Eric Bergshoeff, Paul Townsend et al. profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name h Career Trend Papers Cites
Paul Townsend United Kingdom 66 13.3k 9.0k 7.7k 1.3k 1.3k 236 14.3k
P. van Nieuwenhuizen United States 53 10.8k 0.8× 6.9k 0.8× 5.5k 0.7× 1.1k 0.8× 966 0.8× 244 11.8k
A.A. Tseytlin United Kingdom 75 17.3k 1.3× 10.8k 1.2× 6.9k 0.9× 920 0.7× 1.8k 1.4× 298 18.1k
Hirosi Ooguri United States 51 10.7k 0.8× 7.2k 0.8× 5.0k 0.6× 964 0.7× 2.0k 1.6× 133 12.0k
C.N. Pope United States 64 12.2k 0.9× 10.2k 1.1× 6.3k 0.8× 805 0.6× 1.6k 1.2× 321 13.5k
Ashoke Sen India 60 12.0k 0.9× 8.5k 0.9× 4.8k 0.6× 601 0.5× 1.5k 1.2× 236 13.0k
Jeffrey A. Harvey United States 44 10.7k 0.8× 5.6k 0.6× 4.3k 0.6× 1.3k 1.0× 1.8k 1.4× 107 12.1k
Emil J. Martinec United States 36 9.1k 0.7× 4.0k 0.4× 3.8k 0.5× 1.1k 0.9× 2.3k 1.8× 77 10.6k
Gary T. Horowitz United States 57 14.2k 1.1× 12.5k 1.4× 5.7k 0.7× 2.2k 1.7× 648 0.5× 164 15.3k
Eric Bergshoeff Netherlands 48 8.2k 0.6× 5.9k 0.7× 4.7k 0.6× 535 0.4× 892 0.7× 240 8.7k
Hermann Nicolai Germany 45 6.3k 0.5× 3.6k 0.4× 3.8k 0.5× 692 0.5× 1.1k 0.8× 193 7.0k

Countries citing papers authored by Paul Townsend

Since Specialization
Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Paul Townsend's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Paul Townsend with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Paul Townsend more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Paul Townsend

Since Specialization
Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Paul Townsend. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Paul Townsend. The network helps show where Paul Townsend may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Paul Townsend

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Paul Townsend. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Paul Townsend based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Paul Townsend. Paul Townsend is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

20 of 20 papers shown
1.
Russo, Jorge G. & Paul Townsend. (2025). Simplified self-dual electrodynamics. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2025(10). 1 indexed citations
2.
Russo, Jorge G. & Paul Townsend. (2024). Causality and energy conditions in nonlinear electrodynamics. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2024(6). 8 indexed citations
3.
Russo, Jorge G. & Paul Townsend. (2024). Dualities of self-dual nonlinear electrodynamics. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2024(9). 6 indexed citations
4.
Mezincescu, Luca, Jorge G. Russo, & Paul Townsend. (2024). Hamiltonian birefringence and Born-Infeld limits. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2024(2). 7 indexed citations
5.
Russo, Jorge G. & Paul Townsend. (2023). Nonlinear electrodynamics without birefringence. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2023(1). 26 indexed citations
6.
Bandos, Igor, Kurt Lechner, Dmitri Sorokin, & Paul Townsend. (2020). Nonlinear duality-invariant conformal extension of Maxwell’s equations. Physical review. D. 102(12). 165 indexed citations
7.
Townsend, Paul, et al.. (2017). Anti–de Sitter Particles and Manifest (Super)Isometries. Physical Review Letters. 118(14). 141601–141601. 16 indexed citations
8.
Bergshoeff, Eric, et al.. (2014). The Hamiltonian Form of Three-Dimensional Chern-Simons-like Gravity Models. arXiv (Cornell University). 2 indexed citations
9.
Bergshoeff, Eric, et al.. (2013). Zwei-Dreibein Gravity: A Two-Frame-Field Model of 3D Massive Gravity. Physical Review Letters. 111(11). 111102–111102. 44 indexed citations
10.
Townsend, Paul & Baocheng Zhang. (2013). Thermodynamics of “Exotic” Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli Black Holes. Physical Review Letters. 110(24). 241302–241302. 23 indexed citations
11.
Skenderis, Kostas & Paul Townsend. (2006). Hamilton-Jacobi for Domain Walls and Cosmologies. arXiv (Cornell University). 5 indexed citations
12.
Skenderis, Kostas & Paul Townsend. (2006). Hidden Supersymmetry of Domain Walls and Cosmologies. Physical Review Letters. 96(19). 191301–191301. 90 indexed citations
13.
Townsend, Paul. (2005). Field theory supertubes. Comptes Rendus Physique. 6(2). 271–277. 7 indexed citations
14.
Russo, Jorge G. & Paul Townsend. (2005). Cosmology as relativistic particle mechanics: from big crunch to big bang. Classical and Quantum Gravity. 22(4). 737–751. 6 indexed citations
15.
Townsend, Paul & Mattias N. R. Wohlfarth. (2003). Accelerating Cosmologies from Compactification. Physical Review Letters. 91(6). 61302–61302. 166 indexed citations
16.
Townsend, Paul. (2001). Quintessence from M-theory. Journal of High Energy Physics. 2001(11). 42–42. 57 indexed citations
17.
Gauntlett, Jerome P., David Tong, & Paul Townsend. (2000). Supersymmetric Intersecting Domain Walls. arXiv (Cornell University). 1 indexed citations
18.
Azcárraga, J. A. de, José Izquierdo, J C Pérez Bueno, & Paul Townsend. (1998). Superconformal mechanics and non-linear realizations. arXiv (Cornell University). 18 indexed citations
19.
Townsend, Paul. (1997). Black Holes. arXiv (Cornell University). 21 indexed citations
20.
Sierra, Germán & Paul Townsend. (1983). AN INTRODUCTION TO N=2 RIGID SUPERSYMMETRY. 396–430. 14 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

Explore authors with similar magnitude of impact

Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by P. van Nieuwenhuizen Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by A.A. Tseytlin Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Hirosi Ooguri Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by C.N. Pope Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Ashoke Sen Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Jeffrey A. Harvey Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Emil J. Martinec Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Gary T. Horowitz Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Eric Bergshoeff Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Hermann Nicolai
Rankless by CCL
2026