Musings Of A Physicist

Exploring life, science and the world.

My Blog

Research

Why Research?

I remember during my middle school days, I once got involved in a conversation with my classmate about the elusive topic of time travel. It was such an interesting thought, to be able to travel back and forth in time that I started collecting every possible details of the science behind it, thereby marking my first effort towards scientific ‘research’. I printed out entire Wikipedia articles, made notes and what not. The process was really enjoyable for me, although I could not make a time machine as I had planned at that time !! Don’t worry I will definitely let you know when I succeed 😉

A few years down the line, I had really been motivated towards science, especially physics, thanks to numerous science and space related encyclopedias and popular books like “One Two Three…Infinity” by George Gamow and “The Theory of Everything” by Stephen Hawking. The YouTube channels such as PBS Spacetime and Veritasium were great resources as well. In high school I was faced with a formidable curriculum for Indian entrance examinations, but the math and physics lectures at my coaching classes always seemed enjoyable. Sometimes I would dig deep into specific problems or discuss them with friends and teachers for hours. Gradually I realized that physics research might be my thing. Although I feared how college level physics would turn out to be, it did turn out to be fine and finally I did end up doing a decent amount of undergraduate level research along with scoring good grades in physics courses.

Research Interests

Including, but not limited to:

  • Physical Cosmology
  • Black Holes and General relativity
  • Particle Physics and Quantum Field Theory
  • High Energy Astrophysics

Research Projects

Investigating Primordial Black Holes as a Source of Ultra High Energy Neutrinos via Hawking Radiation (Ongoing)

Supervisor: Prof. S. Shankaranarayanan

The KM3NeT Collaboration has detected neutrinos with an energy of approximately 220 PeV (peta-electron volts),making it the highest-energy neutrino ever observed. The neutrino’s near horizontal path through the detector, combined with its enormous energy, suggests a cosmic origin. However, it is not clear what the origin of these neutrinos is. The project aims to look at one possible way to understand the origin of these neutrinos via Hawking radiation from the primordial black holes in the Milky Way.

Aspects of Relativity : The Penrose Process (Ongoing)

Supervisor: Prof. Sashideep Gutti 

The Penrose process is a phenomenon wherein the energy of a Kerr black hole can be extracted. Studies in this regard have mainly been done considering the outer ergoregion. Here we are trying to study the Penrose process in the interior region of a black hole. 

Study of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars (Completed)

Supervisor: Prof. Sarmistha Banik

I tried to incorporate a few existing models of fermionic and bosonic dark matter into the structural equations of a static, spherically symmetric neutron star and hence study the effects it might have on the observable properties of the neutron star. 

Analysing Active Galactic Nuclei using Fermi Tools (Completed)

Supervisor: Prof. Pratik Majumdar

This involved working on the Fermi Large Area Telescope’s data of the TeV Blazar 1ES1218+304 during a moderately high state in February to March 2023 May 2024-Sep 2024.  I worked on the Fermipy tool developed by NASA to analyze the Fermi telescope’s data of the mentioned Blazar (Active Galactic Nuclei) which emits very high energy gamma rays and hence modelled the spectral energy distribution and light curve which will help us better understand the mechanisms behind the acceleration processes.

Biophysics Simulations of Motor Protein Dynamics on Cell Membranes (Completed)

Supervisor: Prof. Rickmoy Samanta

In this project we tried to explore how does a system of motor proteins interact with it’s cellular environment and with each other. We chose several types of initial configurations and studied the motion and trajectory of the system for a finite time interval of few seconds. The equations were modelled based on existing theoretical frameworks and some parameters were varied to study different scenarios. All of it was done using Mathematica. 

Exploring the Unknown Physics of Surface Plasmon Polaritons (Completed)

Supervisor: Prof. Nitish Kumar Gupta

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are useful in medical science because of their ability to enhance light-matter interactions at the surface of a metal, typically a metal-dielectric interface. However, there is some evident gap in the knowledge of SPPs, and it seems that we have yet to understand their properties fully; there’s more that exists than can be seen by the eyes. Any significant new understanding of SPPs can be very useful and also serve as a beginning step towards a more general framework for describing all types of coupled systems or virtual particles in photonics.

Diamagnetic levitation to study adaptation of microbes to microgravity (Completed)

Supervisor: Prof. Ruchi Jain Dey

In this interdisciplinary project, we aimed to understand the genetic modifications that occur in various bacterial cells as a result of bacterial adaptation to extreme conditions mimicking those available in outer space, particularly microgravity and various radiations like gamma, ultraviolet, etc. For this, we tried to develop a diamagnetic levitation platform using neodymium magnets and a paramagnetic fluid which can levitate bacterial as well as human cells.

Developing FPGA Algorithms for Neutron Gamma Pulse Shape Discrimination (Completed)

Supervisor: Dr. Ram Kumar Paul

The project involved working on the Xilinx ISE environment with VHDL language. Traditional algorithms like the charge comparison method, pulse gradient analysis and partial charge to peak methods were used. The algorithms were executed in an online FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) data acquisition setup, including an ADC. For initial testing of algorithms, an emulator was used and for real data testing ,the whole setup was connected to a BC 501A scintillator detector. Cobalt, Cesium, and Californium were used as sources of neutron and gamma radiation. An adaptive filter was also developed to reduce the noise at the tail end of the pulses.

Publications:

More coming soon…