Research
- Astroparticle physics and Neutrino Oscillations
- Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions
- Higgs Field and Mass of Fundamental Particles
- Publications
I'm interested in particle physics and the implications it holds for the physical world around us.
Questions like: What is dark matter? Are there particles in the Universe we haven't detected yet? Do neutrinos have mass?
If so, what is the mechanism behind it? These are the questions that I feel are worth spending our energy and money upon.
My own research on neutrino oscillations is aimed at trying to understand how oscillations can be modified in the presence of matter and gravitational fields.
Can neutrinos and their flavour compositions be used to understand the regions they originate from and propagate through?- Turns out, yes!
With the detection of supernova neutrinos and discovery of gravitational waves we are currently entering an age of multi-messenger astronomy.
Hence, theoretical development and model building of neutrino production and detection is extremely crucial for analysing data from
upcoming neutrino detectors.
Neutrino Non-Standard Interactions(NSI) and Generalised Neutrino Interactions(GNI) serve as model independent tools for probing new physics at the energy scales within the reach of today's particle accelerators, using the formalism of Effective Field Theories.
One can fit the available data from various experiments(COHERENT, TEXONO,.etc.) to put constraints on the parameter space of the Wilson coefficients. These interactions have a variety of interesting effects(for example, a contribution to the neutrino magnetic moment) which can be probed in upcoming precision coherent elastic scattering experiments.
I’m particularly interested in the Higgs Field and the Vacuum Expectation Value it acquires upon electroweak symmetry breaking. One key aspect of this vacuum expectation value(VEV) is that it is considered to be the same throughout the Universe. If we look carefully at the solution for the classical VEV, we see that it depends on the quadratic and quartic couplings of the Higgs potential which could themselves change at different energy scales(Callan-Symanzik Equation). So if the VEV can change at different energy scales, the Higgs mass and for that matter, the mass of any fundamental particle is subject to change throughout the cosmological history of our Universe. We know that Electroweak Baryogenesis(EWBG) is unable to explain the observed baryon asymmetry in the universe within the framework of the Standard Model alone. A variable Higgs mass can solve the problem of first-order phase transition which is only possible if mass of the Higgs boson is less than 70 GeV. Variable particle mass can also be used to explain the galactic rotation curves which are traditionally deemed as the evidence for dark matter.
