Research

Broadly speaking, I am interested in age old questions such as where did we come from, what's the fate of the Universe, what the Universe is made up of etc.,. I try to find answers to these questions by fitting theory to cosmological data sets. Currently, I am part of South Pole Telescope (SPT), which as name suggets is located at South Pole and observes the pristine southern sky at mili-meter wavelengths.
According to the current cosmological paradigm, 95% of the Universe is made of dark sector - ~26% of which is dark matter, responsible for additional gravitational effects found in large scale structures and ~ 69% of it is dark energy which is suspected to be the reason for accelerated expansion of the Universe. Galaxy clusters being the most massive objects in the Universe (100 trillion times more massive than Sun!!) are excllent probes of the matter and energy content in the Universe. However, cluster cosmology is currently limited by uncertainty in mass estimation. As part of my PhD, I am developing statistical and mathematical methods for robust galaxy cluster mass estimation using Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Lensing.