A big and beautiful picture of the universe inspires me, and I am passionate about connecting various branches of astrophysics (and cosmology) together.
My primary research interests span both cosmology and stellar atmospheres. On the cosmology side my strongest interests are in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background and precise determination of the galactic foregrounds especially in the 1-50 GHz range. On the stellar atmosphere side, my primary interest is radiative transfer effects in general astrophysical systems such as supernovae, planets and galaxies.
My PhD thesis involved building and modifying a radiative transfer (RT) code particularly for the atmospheres of Type Ia and core-collapse SNe. My work aimed at addressing the time dependence in the rates of the various radiative processes which control the spectral features. On the computational side, the RT problem gave me an immense boost. RT problems are most complicated due to scattering of electromagnetic radiation which makes this a N^2 sized problem. Additional complications are added by large set of elements which are generally present in typical supernova atmospheres. I am proficient in MPI, OpenMP conversion of serial codes in order to achieve efficient scaling with additional number of processors. I continued to work on radiative transfer in Type Ia SN atmospheres while at ASU, where I also extended my work into nucleosynthesis in the SNe explosions, particularly to Si-group elements and their manifestation in the SNe spectra.
I am passionate about cosmology and my current research in cosmology focuses on the effects of magnetic field in the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background and neutral hydrogen emission. My most recent publication in the Phys. Rev. D. involved estimation of the circularly polarized galactic synchrotron emission which may interfere with low frequency (1-50 GHz) CMB experiments.I have explored how cosmological measurements are affected by various phenomenon in the radio regime, primarily due to galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields. Most of these effects act as foregrounds to the cosmological signal of interest. I am interested in precisely estimating the galactic foregrounds (such as linearly and circularly polarized synchrotron emission). Sometimes, the signal of interest can be separated from the foregrounds simply based on component separation methods, however, not always. Especially when there is leakage from the polarized foregrounds. I am also interested in exploring various statistical avenues to distinguish a cosmological signal from its galactic foregrounds.