Associate Fellow, KICP
Research Associate, Fermilab
- Address:
- ERC 407
- Address:
- Wilson Hall 6th Floor – 674, Fermilab
- Email:
- mainak@fnal.gov
- Website:
- https://sites.google.com/asu.edu/mainakm
Background
Postdoctoral Scholar and IGC Fellow, Pennsylvania State University, 2022 - 2025
Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2018 - 2022
Research
I am an astroparticle physicist exploring how cosmic particle accelerators reveal the most energetic processes in the Universe and probe the Standard Model of particle physics and beyond. My work spans multi-messenger astrophysics and theoretical high-energy physics/cosmology, using neutrinos, gravitational waves, and electromagnetic signals as complementary probes. On the astrophysics side, I study the phenomenology of astrophysical neutrinos, dark matter, and emissions from astrophysical sources like supernovae, neutron star mergers, gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei, and tidal disruption events. On the cosmology side, my work has focused on the dynamics of quantum fields in time- and space-dependent backgrounds, investigating particle production, backreaction, and early-universe phase transitions leading to the formation of topological defects and their dynamics.