Shruti Paranjape
Postdoctoral researcher
My research focuses on aspects of quantum field theory and particle physics. I am particularly interested in properties of scattering amplitudes, gravitational observables and the mathematics of quantum physics, long-standing questions addressed by modern methods.
Currently, I am a postdoctoral scholar at Brown University.
Research Interests
A model describing the physics of our universe must consist of two basic components: a spectrum of particles of various charges, masses and spins and a set of interactions between them. Experimentally, one can probe these aspects of a model via particle scattering processes and the probability associated to each scattering process is fixed by its scattering amplitude.
A modern approach to calculating scattering amplitudes exploits redundancies in the traditional "Feynman diagram" method to streamline the calculation, providing a powerful tool to calculate high precision results at the LHC and uncover deeper mathematical structures in quantum field theory. Interestingly, it is the symmetries of the underlying field theory that manifest themselves as properties of and relations among Feynman diagrams.
This leads us to the natural question: to what extent can one determine scattering amplitudes using mathematical structure and symmetry principles alone? And what can amplitudes reveal about the symmetries of underlying theories? Answering these questions has been the central goal of my research.