Currently, I am wrapping up my doctoral studies at the Institute for Nuclear Physics, Technical University of Darmstadt. My PhD supervisor is Prof. Dr. Guy Moore, Chair of the Dept. of Quantum Chromodynamics.
About Me
“I am who I am.” — YHWH.
“Aham Brahmasmi (apunich Bhagwaan hai).” — Advaita Vedanta.
Overview
Born a curious character, raised among sagacious storytellers, and trained as a theoretical physicist, I am as much passionate about
- decoding piquant puzzles, as I am about
- telling interesting stories about them:
all of physics is a grand story told by the universe about itself; all human lives are also stories in the end. Without stories, which are quintessentially lies, we cannot reach for the truth. My story so far has come to this:
I am a theoretical physicist, mathematical modeller, HPC specialist, C/C++ developer, statistical analyst, teacher, tinkerer, story-teller, writer, TTRPG Game-Master, and a family man.
My love for
- learning,
- problem-solving, and
- analytical thinking
is at the core of my professional identity. My love of
- beauty,
- stories, and
- human beings—esp. my family—
is at the core of my personal identity.
Projects
Are you interested in what I have been up to? Here is a brief glimpse (click them to open).
Dark Matter Axion Cosmology
PhD Project
The “axion” is a very promising Dark Matter candidate which emerges out of a completely unrelated minimal extension of the SM: a solution to the so-called "Strong CP Problem". As luck would have it, the axion also happens to behave like cold Dark Matter!
We studied the dynamics and spectrum of emergent global topological artefacts (a network of cosmic strings and domain walls) in the axionic vacuum of the early universe, and followed their decay into later stages when the axion’s gravitational self-interaction leads to structure formation and other phenomenologically relevant dynamics. We developed scalable numerical tools and models, implemented in highly parallel code, to follow the evolution and spectrum of the axion from its roots in the early cosmic string network, and subsequent development into structures such as axion miniclusters, oscillons, axion stars, etc. and strived for a more accurate and robust assessment of the axion’s properties, such as mass, etc.
Boundary EFT Near An Event Horizon
Master Thesis
An event horizon is a phenomenological realization of a boundary that glues two independently globally hyperbolic spacetimes which, due to the nature of their difference in the admittance of timelike Killing fields, appear drastically different to quantum information carriers, since one spacetime sees a self-adjoint Hamiltonian which preserves unitarity, whereas on the other side, a quantum system evolves non-unitarily in accordance with an accretive Hamiltonian.
We attempted to study this seemingly difficult transition of perspective, using a toy model which mimics the formation of an event horizon during a stellar collapse. In that regard, we formulated a general boundary effective field theory (EFT). We found that a local source can generate an effective charge distribution at the boundary which dynamically interacts with the fields and causes them to reflect or refract with the correct amplitudes even at the classical level. This behaviour can be depicted in a tree diagram where the boundary interacts as an effective dynamical field.
Other Projects
Misc. Interests
I have also explored diverse fields beyond my main area of expertise, such as
- Computational Chemistry (Research Fellowship at IIAP)
- Robotics (Edge-detecting robots, Quadcoptors, etc.)
- Machine Learning (Courses at LMU, self-study, etc.)
- Quantitative Finance (Online courses and DIY projects)
Education
In the spring of 2024, I enrolled at the prestigious US-based distance education institute WorldQuant University to pursue an M.Sc. in Financial Engineering. It is a highly rigorous degree program, admitting students after a thorough proficiency test, demanding about 25 hours of coursework commitment per week, and promsing on honing technical intelligence (IQ), fostering emotional growth through effective teamwork (EQ) and promoting cultural understanding for global competence (CQ).
I obtained an Elite Master in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from LMU Munich and the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Please check the Projects list to see what I did there as part of my master thesis.
I obtained a triple-major B.Sc. in Physics, Mathematics and Electronics from Christ University, Bengaluru, India. During that time, I was involved in a lot of extra-curricular scientific projects, such as a fellowship from the Indian Science Academies to pursue a research project at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.
I did my Higher Secondary studies (2 years) in the Science stream at Shrimanta Shankar Academy, Guwahati, India, under the Assam Higher Secondary Education Board. Before that, I was a non-institutional private student.
Curriculum Vitae
For a detailed examination of my professional credentials, please refer to my CV.