My research interests are in the area of theoretical cosmology
and large scale structure in the universe. I am primarily
interested in understanding how did the universe evolve into
its present state and what can we learn about its origin and
composition from the observations. See my
preprints
or my
webpage for more details.
In recent years, cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies
have emerged as a very powerful probe of the early universe.
On the observational side, a number of detections starting
with COBE in 1992 have been reported. The future is even more
promising with many small angular scale experiments being built,
many of which are emerging from our experimental cosmology group
(Page,
Staggs, Wilkinson). On the theoretical side we and others have
shown that CMB anisotropies and its polarization are very
sensitive to several
cosmological parameters. With the use of codes such as
CMBFAST
cosmologists are already constraining many of these.
New theoretical ideas are being continuously proposed and tested
with CMB
observations.
On small scales CMB anisotropies can be created by nonlinear
physics phenomena, such as
Sunyaev-Zeldovich
effect.
Using large numerical simulations one can predict their
observational
features and compare them to real observations.
Several experimental groups are planning to built dedicated
experiments to detect such signatures.
Dark matter distribution and its evolution in time
is another powerful probe of the early universe.
With my colleagues we are investigating how does dark matter
distribution reflect in the distribution of galaxies. This
depends sensitively on the nature of the process of galaxy
formation,
which continues to be a challenging theoretical problem.
Gravitational lensing traces dark matter directly and is not
sensitive to the issues of galaxy formation. It can be
detected through the distortions of distant galaxies or CMB.
These distortions are small, but statistically detectable.
With the help of large numerical simulations we are making
detailed predictions that can be compared to a number
of upcoming observations, such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey
of which Astrophysics Department here is a member.
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