Soubhik Kumar
Tufts University, MA·Physics
The Standard Model of particle physics explains a huge range of experiments, but it leaves two big questions open. What drove cosmic inflation, the brief burst of extremely rapid expansion in the very early Universe?
- Fields
Physics
Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Topics
particle cosmology
cosmic inflation
dark matter
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Use effective field theory to classify the non-Gaussian signatures, unusual statistical patterns, left by heavy beyond-Standard-Model particles produced during inflation, and build templates for searches in cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys.
- Quantify how small-scale inflationary dynamics generate a scalar-induced gravitational-wave background, and develop a flexible numerical code to predict this signal for future gravitational-wave observatories.
- Compute the 'freeze-in' abundance of light, very weakly interacting particles motivated by dark matter models, which build up from the hot plasma after inflation, and assess whether future CMB surveys could discover them.
More about the research
And what is dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up about 85 percent of all matter? Many proposed answers involve new particles that are too heavy or interact too weakly to be made in laboratories. The early Universe reached far higher energies than any experiment on Earth, so it can serve as a natural laboratory for this new physics.
Why it matters
This is basic science. It aims to explain what powered inflation and what dark matter is made of. The predicted signals and the new numerical code could guide how current and future CMB surveys and gravitational-wave observatories analyze their data. They could help these experiments test ideas about new particles that are out of reach of laboratory experiments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tristan Smith
Swarthmore College, PA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Determine the theory space available to extensions of LCDM, the standard cosmological model, by identifying which model properties are required to resolve the disagreements in the measured expansion rate and matter clustering.
Dragan Huterer
University of Michigan, MI·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Develop a method to measure the Hubble constant by cross-correlating gravitational-wave dark sirens with galaxy distributions. Dark sirens are merger events with no detected light.
Chihway Chang
University of Chicago, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure cross-correlations between CMB lensing, galaxy positions, galaxy lensing and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect using DES, SPT and ACT data, to tighten constraints on the universe's properties.
The school
Tufts University: 19 labs on PI Pages, $278M a year on research, 144 research doctorates a year.
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