Nazeef Nazeef

I am a full-time PhD candidate at the School of Physics, with Dr. Nichole Barry as my supervisor. I have a Bachelor's in Electronics and Communications along with a Master's in Physics from BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus, and I pursued my Master's thesis project at KTH Stockholm in the field of computational physics and nuclear astrophysics. My research interests and expertise lie in astrophysics, astro-particle physics, and radio astronomy.

Project: Search Cosmic String wakes using MWA

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Search for radio signatures from Rubin-detected transients using MWA

Supervised by: Dr Nichole Barry

Project description: Several theories beyond the standard model have predicted the existence of early universe topological defects; one class of such a defect is cosmic strings. They are relativistic objects, which deformed the space around them. Their movement in the early universe plasma has created wedge-shaped overdensities of matter called cosmic string wakes, which would have a distinct imprint in the 21 cm observations at redshifts greater than reionization.

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) has been suggested as an ideal instrument to search for these non-Gaussian features in the early universe radio data, and I will be engaged in simulating, analysing, and developing tools to search for these cosmic entities.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an optical telescope that is slated to detect millions of transients each night of observation. As a secondary objective, I will be performing follow-up observations on transients detected by Rubin to search for radio afterglow signatures. This will build a radio record of these transients, enabling us to probe explosion/shockwave evolution, progenitor physics, transient energetics, and statistics.