arjun bagchi - Group (2024)

Below are the details of the present and (some) past members of our group. If you are looking for opportunities to work with the group, some updated information should periodically appear for possible openings below.

If you are looking for summer or winter projects/internships, I am NOT available for these. More details below.

The string theory group website can be accessed here.

The string theory group at IIT Kanpur consists of other faculty members and post-doctoral fellows. Below you can find some details of the students working with me and former members of group.

PhD Students

Ritankar Chatterjee (2018 - 2024)

Ritankar joined the group in January 2018. He was a 2-year MSc student here at IIT Kanpur. After a brief stint at IMSc Chennai, he has decided to move back to Kanpur for his PhD.

Ritankar works on understanding the high energy limit of string theory as well as on CFTs with additional symmetry.

Ritankar's publications can be accessed here.

Saikat Mondal (2019 - )

Saikat was also a 2 year Masters student at IIT Kanpur. He pursued his one-year MS project with the group on aspects of conformal field theory. He joined the group in August 2019 for a PhD.

Saikat is currently interested in fermions in non-Lorentzian settings.

Saikat's publications can be accessed here.

Amartya Saha (2020 - )

Amartya was previously an undergraduate in the physics department at IIT Kanpur, and spent a substantial time doing research with the group. He has now formally joined for a PhD. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Prime Minister's Research Fellowship.

Amartya works on understanding holography for asymptotically flat spacetimes.

His publications can be accessed here.

Pushkar Soni (2023 - )

Pushkar is an integrated MS-PhD student. He has recently joined the group. At present, his work focusses on understanding hydrodynamics in the Carrollian regime.

Sharang Iyer (2023 - )

Sharang has joined the group after a BS-MS degree from IISER Thiruvananthapuram. He currently works on aspects of black holes and near horizon symmetries.

Masters students and Undergraduates

Current students:

• Sayantan Sarkar

• Supratik Biswas

• Nachiketh M

Information for prospective students and post-doctoral fellows

Below is information that is relevant currently and should be updated on a regular basis.

PhD students: Prospective PhD students who are very interested and very motivated to work with the group, are encouraged to drop me an email.

Post Doctoral Fellows: Post doctoral fellows working in related fields are always very welcome. If you are interested in working with my group or the high energy physics group at IIT Kanpur in general, I invite you to get in touch with me. We usually advertise post-doctoral openings of the group through INSPIRE in the usual time (late November) for people joining in the following year (Aug-Sept).

MS students: I usually have vacancies for 2 MS thesis students in any year. The preference would be for students at IIT Kanpur, especially those I have interacted with.

Undergraduates: I may be able to supervise (a limited number of) motivated undergraduates, both formally and informally during term time. You are encouraged to send me an email and then drop by my office.

Summer/winter students: I am NOT available for supervising students during the summer and winter breaks. I am mostly abroad during these months. It is advised that you don't send me messages with such requests. Emails asking about such opportunities may not be answered.

Previous Members

Graduated PhD Students

Minhajul Islam (PhD, 2024)

Minhajul defended his thesis in June 2024.

Minhajul was a 2 year Masters student at IIT Kanpur. He pursued his one-year MS project with the group on aspects of classical field theory and their possible generalisation to Galilean systems. He decided to stay on for a PhD here and formally joined the group in August 2018.

His PhD focussed on non-Lorentzian field theories in various dimensions.

Minhajul's publications can be accessed here.

Minhajul has now left academia for a job in the financial sector.

Punit Sharma (PhD, 2024)

Punit defended his thesis in May 2024.

Punit formally joined the group in August 2016. His thesis was an attempt at understanding various questions regarding the quantisation of tensionless strings.

Punit's publications can be accessed here.

Sanchari Pal (PhD, 2024)

Sanchari defended her thesis is January 2024.

She had joined the group in the second half of 2019. She was previously a PhD student working on Cosmology, but decided to shift to more formal theoretical research.

Her thesis addressed modular invariance and conformal blocks in CFTs as well as BMS-invariant field theories.

Sanchari's publications can be accessed here.

Sanchari is at present on a break from academia figuring out her next move.

Sudipta Dutta (PhD, 2023)

Sudipta defended his thesis in November 2023.

Sudipta joined the group in August 2017. He did his Masters here at IIT Kanpur and decided to stay back for his PhD.

Sudipta' thesis was an attempt at understanding holographic aspects asymptotically flat four dimensional spacetimes.

Sudipta's publications can be accessed here.

Sudipta is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UL Brussels.

Poulami Nandi (PhD, 2022)

Poulami defended her thesis in April 2022.

Poulami was a part of the group since March 2017. She previously joined IIT Kanpur as an integrated MS-PhD student in 2014.

Poulami's PhD thesis was an effort to understand Carrollian field theories in various dimensions and their applications to holography in flat spacetimes. Her publications can be viewed here.

After spending a few months at IIT Gandhinagar, Poulami is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Pulastya Parekh (PhD, 2020)

Pulastya defended his thesis in January 2020.

Pulastya joined the group in 2013 and in IISER Pune, and moved with me to IIT Kanpur in August 2016. Pulastya did his Masters from IIT Mumbai before coming over to IISER Pune.

His PhD thesis was on aspects of Tensionless String Theory. His publications can be viewed here.

Pulastya is currently a post-doctoral fellow at CECS, Valdivia, Chile.

Aditya Mehra (PhD, 2018)

Aditya Mehra is the first PhD student to graduate out of this group. He defended his thesis in November 2018.

Aditya joined the group in 2013 when I had first joined the faculty at IISER Pune. He moved to IIT Kanpur with me in August 2016. Aditya has a Masters from IIT Delhi.

His PhD thesis was on the construction of Galilean Gauge Theories. His publications can be viewed here.

Aditya was a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, UK, a Humboldt fellow at AEI Potsdam, Germany and a postdoc at IIP, Natal, Brazil. He is currently an Assistant Professor at JSPM University, Pune.

Previous postdoctoral fellows

Mangesh Mandlik

Mangesh was a postdoctoral fellow with the group between 2019 and 2022.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology at Dhanbad. We continue to collaborate on various projects. Here is his homepage at IIT Dhanbad.

His publications can be accessed here.

Kedar Kolekar

Kedar was a postdoctoral fellow with the group between 2019 and 2023.

He is currently a postdoc at the Yau Centre, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. We continue to collaborate on various project.

His publications can be accessed here.

Zodinmawia

Zodinmawia was a post-doctoral fellow with the group between Sep 2016 and Dec 2019 and a recipient of a National Post-doctoral Fellowship from SERB India, during his time at IIT Kanpur.

Zodin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Mizoram University, Aizawl.

Zodin's publications can be accessed here.

Shankhadeep Chakrabortty

Shankhadeep was a postdoctoral fellow with the group between September 2014 and November 2016 (at IISER Pune and then briefly at IIT Kanpur) with a period of a year at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

Shankhadeep is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology at Ropar. He remains a very valuable collaborator on the project of tensionless strings. Here is his homepage at IIT Ropar.

His publications can be accessed here.

Rudranil Basu

Rudranil was a postdoctoral fellow with the group between September 2014 and November 2015 at IISER Pune.

He is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Goa. Like Shankhadeep, Rudranil remains a very valuable collaborator of the group.

His publications can be accessed here.

Previous MS students

• Rishabh Kaushik (2021-22): Rishabh was a 2-year MS student at IIT Kanpur. He worked on understanding modular aspects of BMS field theories with additional U(1) symmetry. Along with Debmalya (see below), he also worked on Non-Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras. Rishabh is current a PhD student at ICTS Bengaluru.

• Debmalya Sarkar (2021-22): Debmalya is a Electrical Engineer turned theoretical Physicist. He now has a BTech (EE) and an MS (Physics) from IIT Kanpur. With the group, and with especially Rishabh (above), Debmalya worked on Non-Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras and modular aspects of BMS field theories with additional U(1) symmetry. Debmalya finished his degree at IITK early and was then a visiting student at ICTS Bengaluru. He is currently a PhD student at Harvard University, USA.

• Suprateek Das (2021-22): Suprateek was a BS-MS student at IIT Kanpur. He worked on aspects of string theory, especially the formulation of tensionless open strings and the non-relativistic limit on the string worldsheet.

• Yaman Sanghavi (2019-20): Yaman was a BS-MS student at IIT Kanpur. He worked on Galilean electrodynamics and Yang-Mills theories and a geometric understanding of them. His work was recognised with a Bhagavatula best project award. Yaman is currently pursuing his PhD in SUNY, Stony Brook, USA.

• Amartya Saha (2017-20): Amartya was involved with the group as an undergraduate. He worked towards problems related to the conformal bootstrap and its generalisations to BMS invariant theories. Amartya is continuing for a PhD with the group.

• Saikat Mondal (2018-19): Saikat pursued his year-long project with the group and worked towards an understanding of the bootstrap programme in Galilean CFTs. Saikat is continuing for a PhD with the group.

• Sk. Asrap Murshid (2018-19): Asrap was also a 2 year MSc student who worked on his 1-year masters project with the group. He was attempting to understand non-relativistic fermions from a geometric perspective. He is now pursing a PhD in Lehigh University, USA.

• Aditya Sinha (2017-18): Aditya was a BS-MS student at IIT Kanpur. He carried out his year-long project with us working on entanglement and holography. He previously worked on a project with the group where he learnt the basics of string theory. Aditya did a Masters in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London after his degree at IITK. He is now a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

• Minhajul Islam (2017-18): Minhajul is continuing for a PhD with the group.

• Venkata Lokesh Kumar Y (2016-2017): Lokesh was a 2 year Masters student here at IIT Kanpur and he pursued his one-year Masters thesis with the group. He worked on the construction of a Galilean version of the Born-Infeld theory and its non-abelian generalisations. Lokesh is currently pursuing his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

• Kapil Krishna Gupta (2016-2017): Kapil was an integrated BS-MS student at IIT Kanpur and was supervised for his Masters thesis. Kapil attempted to understand how to generalise the Higgs mechanism to non-relativistic field theories. Kapil has taken up a teaching position in New Delhi.

Previous BS students

Some of the undergraduates who were associated with the group are:

• Navya Gupta: Navya was interested in aspects of information theory and its new-found connection to gravity. She pursued ideas of entanglement in quantum field theories during her research with the group. Navya went on to a Masters in the PSI programme at Perimeter Institute, Canada. She is currently a PhD student at Maryland, USA.

• Chetan Vuppulury: Chetan was a BS-MS student who would work on aspects of holography in asymptotically flat spacetimes in four dimensions. He did his MS thesis on mathematical structures in gauge theories, which was jointly supervised by AB and people in the Maths department at IITK. Chetan is currently pursuing a PhD in Mathematics at the University of Rome.

• Samarth Chawla: Samarth was another BS-MS student who studying basics of string theory and worked on light-cone quantisation of tensionless strings. He went on to do his MS project with Diptarka Das and then went for a PhD at the University of Arizona, USA.

Students at IISER Pune

Sourav Sarkar: Sourav worked with the group for about one semester and was involved in a project on aspects of gravity in 2d flat spacetimes in the summer of 2014 that led to a publication. Sourav is presently pursuing a PhD in string theory at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Ashish Kakkar: Ashish worked on various aspects of classical and quantum field theory. He was very actively involved in understanding singular limits Yang Mills theories and his research led to two publications with the group. Ashish is currently pursuing a PhD in string theory at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA.

Anandita De: Anandita worked on reading projects of conformal field theory and then on aspects of the BMS group and its highest weight representations in higher dimensions in 2014. She is currently pursuing a PhD in string theory at University of California at Davis, USA.

Others who were involved with the group include Sharvaree Vadgama, Akshay Khadse and Himanshu Badhani.

Mangesh Mandlik

Mangesh was a postdoctoral fellow with the group between 2019 and 2022.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology at Dhanbad. We continue to collaborate on various project. Here is his homepage at IIT Dhanbad.

His publications can be accessed here.