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Srinivasan Raghunathan

Survey Science Fellow


Centre for AstroPhysical Surveys
National Centre for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
Email: srinirag[at]illinois.edu
Github: Link



 
 
 

Research interests:


My research interests revolve around exploring the small-scale secondary anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) namely kinematic/thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) effects and gravitational lensing to understand the epoch of reionisation, constrain the standard model of cosmology and test the extensions as well as deviations from it.

South Pole Telescope (SPT): For my research, I primarily use data from SPT which is a 10-metre diameter telescope mapping the sky in millimetre wavelengths (90/150/220 GHz) from the geographic south pole. With roughly 1 arcmin resolution, SPT is one of the most sensitive instruments in successfully mapping the CMB. The science drivers of SPT range from constraining the standard model of cosmology to detecting sub-mm transients.

CMB-S4: Besides SPT, I am also deeply invovled in the next generation CMB-S4 which will map the mm-wave sky simulataneosuly from both Chile and the South Pole. CMB-S4 has four major science drivers namely
  • Detecting primordial gravitational waves from cosmic inflation using polarised CMB B-modes
  • Constraining the number of relativistic species in the Universe (Neff) using small-scale CMB measurements
  • Detecting high redshift (z>1.5) galaxy clusters to understand the evolution of intracluster medium
  • Detecting and following-up mm-wave transients
  • I primarily work on forecasting and optimising the CMB-S4 telescopes for Neff and cluster measurements.
     
     

    Collaboration activities:

  • Co-chair of SPT's CMB secondaries and cross-correlation analysis working group.
  • Co-chair of CMB-S4's clusters analysis working group.
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    Research background:

    My PhD thesis was on the analysis of data from the Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) experiment which focussed on the search for the primordial gravitational waves from cosmic inflation.

    During my Masters, I worked on producing a catalogue of high redshift faint galaxies using their MgII absorption signatures in the spectra of distant quasar. You can find different versions of MgII catalouges in this link.

    For more information about publications and results, please look into publications page.
     
     

    Employment:


    • Survey Science Fellow, Centre for AstroPhysical Surveys, National Centre for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (Current).
    • Postdoctoral scholar, University of California, Los Angeles, USA (2018 - 2021).
    • Postdoctoral scholar, University of Melbourne, Australia (2015 - 2018).
     
     

    Education:


    • PhD: Universidad de Chile: Conferred in March, 2016.
    • Dissertation topic: Search for inflationary gravitational waves using data from Atacama B-mode Search (ABS) experiment.
    • Awarded graduate student of 2013 prize, Department of Astronomy.
    • Awarded CONICYT PhD fellowship by the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research.