I am a second-year IMPRS Ph.D. student at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), Garching, Germany. I graduated with BS-MS in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in July 2017. For about a year, I was a Junior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. I was born and brought up in Patna, India.
The gas surrounding galaxies known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM) holds important information about the processes that drive the galaxy evolution. Different metal absorption lines detected in spectra of bright background sources (e.g., Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs) or Quasars) at redshifts smaller than the quasar redshifts have opened a new window to study this gas, that remains nearly invisible otherwise. These absorption features can reveal the physical nature of the CGM as they trace the different phases and properties of the gas. The goal of my current project is to perform absorption-line and stacking studies on a larger volume of data and provide tighter constraints on the physical properties of CGM of different galaxies. I work extensively with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. As a part of this project, I am also developing a robust automated pipeline to detect these absorption features in quasar or galaxy spectra.
Paper: Characterizing the abundance, properties, and kinematics of the cool circumgalactic medium of galaxies in absorption with SDSS DR16 (submitted)
Giant gaseous layers (termed "superdisk") have been hypothesized in the past to account for the strip-like radio emission gap (or straight-edged central brightness depression) observed between the twin radio lobes, in over a dozen relatively nearby powerful Fanaroff-Riley Class II radio galaxies. They could also provide a plausible alternative explanation for a range of observations. Although several explanations have been proposed for the origin of the superdisks (SDs), little is known about their material content. In my MS project, I did a HI 21 cm emission line studies from VLA radio continuum data for these SDs as a first attempt to understand and constrain their physical properties. For more details see-
Hydrogen deficient stars (Hds) are almost devoid of hydrogen (~1 % by number). The most abundant elements are helium (98% by number) and carbon (1-2% by number). They are old and generally evolved. For the main sequence stars, hydrogen is an inherent source of continuum opacity, but this is not true for Hds. The spectroscopic abundance analysis of hydrogen deficient stars is a challenge as the source of opacity is not known. The line strength of different transitions is a function of the opacity of the medium. Also, opacity is a strong function of the temperature of the medium and the wavelength of the emitted photon. With robust information about the sources of continuum opacity, a precise abundance analysis of Hds stars can be performed. The aim of my bachelor's project was to find these sources that dominate the opacity in Hds. I found the major sources of continuum opacity in optical and UV for cool and moderately hot hydrogen deficient stars.
2018 - present Dr. rer. nat in Astronomy, Ludwig Maximilian University - Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany.
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Guinevere Kauffmann, Co-Adv: Dr. Dylan Nelson
2016 - 2017 MS, Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India.
Thesis: "A sensitive search for HI 21 cm emission from super disks in radio galaxies", Adv: Dr. Nirupam Roy, IISc.
2012 - 2016 BSc (Research), Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Thesis: "Sources of Continuum Opacity in Hydrogen deficient stars", Adv: Prof. Gajendra Pandey, IIA.
A. Anand, D. Nelson and G. Kauffmann, “Characterizing the abundance, properties, and kinematics of the cool circumgalactic medium of galaxies in absorption with SDSS DR16 (submitted)"
A. Anand, N. Roy and Gopal-Krishna, “Search for H I emission from superdisk candidates associated with radio galaxies, 2019, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA) 19, 83 (Anand et al. 2019)
Oct 2020 Galaxy In-house Symposium, MPA, Garching, 27 Oct 2020 (Talk).
Oct 2020 Institute Seminar, MPA, Garching, 26 Oct 2020 (Talk).
July 2020 IMPRS Students' Symposium MPE, Garching, 30-31 July 2020 (Talk).
Jul 2020 Galaxy Group Meeting: Paper Presentation, MPA, Garching, 15 July 2020.
Mar 2020 IMPRS Advanced Course: Formation and Evolution of Galaxies, MPE, Garching, 2-6 Mar 2020.
Nov 2019 IMPRS Advanced Course: Cosmic Structure Formation, MPE, Garching, 25-29 Nov 2019.
Oct 2019 CGM Conference, Berlin, Germany, Oct 3-5, 2019 (Participation).
Aug 2019 Summer School in Galaxy Formation, AKSS, Spetses, Greece, Aug 28-Sept 5, 2019.
May 2019 IMPRS Soft Skills Course: Python Programming Course, MPE, Garching, 6-10 May 2019.
Apr 2019 IMPRS Advanced Course: Galaxy Evolution from the Galaxies' Perspective, MPE, Garching, 8-12 Apr 2019.
Mar 2019 IMPRS Soft Skills Course: Git/Bash Programming, MPE, Garching, 19-22 Mar 2019.
Jan 2019 IMPRS Advanced Course: High Resolution Imaging Methods in Astronomy, MPE, Garching, 14-18 Jan 2019.
Nov 2018 Python for HPC, attended at MPCDF, Garching, 20-21 Nov 2018.
Dec 2016 Analysis of Wilberforce Pendulum, talk given at NIAS, Bangalore.
Mar 2016 Neighbourhood Astronomy Meeting, held at International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore.
July 2013 Multiwavelength photometric study of young open star cluster NGC1931, talk given at ARIES, Nainital.