About

Hi! suit I’m Raj Sinai Kunkolienkar, a graduate from the integrated M.Sc. in Physics with honors program at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science – Pilani, Goa Campus. I joined the program in August 2012. I was a visiting student at CFP, University of Porto.  I pursued my thesis work at Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad.

Currently, I am taking time off from formal education to indulge in thinking about the process of learning itself. I’m setting up a co-learning space in Goa, India to pilot a top-down approach to learning.

Welcome to my academic site & blog.

I was born in 1994 and brought up in Goa, India. One purpose of this site is to maintain a log of my interests and worldline in the field of Theoretical Physics. My current academic focus is on the intersection of cosmology, high energy physics, and quantum information. I like to explore these using techniques in holography and entanglement.

Here’s a brief on my academic work: CV.

Besides physics, I dabble in amateur astronomy, photography, history, and heritage of Goa, philosophy, psychology, listening and dancing to music from the ’20s to the ’70s. I love discussing curiosities and connections that I observe in the world around me, largely pertaining to these topics.  I am keen on the popularization of science and try my best to decipher the process of science to interested audiences.

Illustration by Jackie Ferrentino, used in a Nautilius article.

Preprint

Chronology // Theoretical Physics

2013

  • In my first year, I was interested in Variable Stars. It led me to read up a lot on the mechanisms and formation of R Corona Borealis variables. This, in turn, led to an interest in White Dwarf mergers and formation of SN1a. This was supplemented by a course in Astronomy & Astrophysics under Prof. T K Jha.
  • In the summer after my first year, I started learning Special & General Theory of Relativity under the guidance of my seniors. It was triggered by a need to understand what happens to the conservation of energy in the context of General Relativity.
  • After my third semester, I conducted a reading of Classical Field Theory.

2014

  • In the summer of 2014, I worked under the guidance of Prof. Patrick Dasgupta at the Department of Physics & Astrophysics at the University of Delhi on the Aharonov-Bohm effect in Einstein-Cartan spacetime.
  • I am interested in Thanu Padmanabhan’s perspective on the emergent nature of classical gravity. I explored the same under Prof. Kinjal Banerjee. We tried to relate the idea of the Bousso Covariant Entropy Bound to Paddy’s conjectures.
  • At the same time, I was interested in the Black Hole Information Paradox & the Firewall Paradox. I completed a reading course on Black Holes in my fifth semester, with a focus on their classical and quantum mechanical properties.

2015

  • In my sixth semester, I finished my coursework requirement. I took courses like GR, QFT, QIC and Particle Physics to fill my elective requirements.
  • As a part of the General Relativity course, I carried out a study of cosmological inflation, the focus being the motivation behind introducing inflation.
  • I also worked with Prof. Kinjal Banerjee on the application of the ideas of dynamical systems to cosmology.
  • For my thesis work at HRI, I worked on inflation under Prof. Anshuman Maharana. My thesis was titled ‘Inflation: EFT & Conformal Symmetries‘.  I’m trying to develop a link between the two ideas.

2016

  • I worked under Prof. Joao Penedones & Prof. Miguel Costa Sousa at CFP, the University of Porto on topics related to Conformal Field Theories & Mellin amplitudes during Spring ’16.
  • During my time at CFP, I undertook a course on the AdS/CFT correspondence under Prof. Joao Penedones.
  • I studied the entanglement from gravity paradigm and developed a dS/MERA correspondence. The work is speculative yet instructive in nature.

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Physics & Mathematics courses undertaken:

  • Mechanics, Oscillations & Waves
  • Mathematics I (Multivariable Calculus)
  • Mathematics II (Linear Algebra and Complex Analysis)
  • Mathematics III (Differential Equations)
  • Probability & Statistics
  • Classical Mechanics
  • Electromagnetic Theory I
  • Optics
  • Quantum Mechanics I 
  • Electromagnetic Theory II
  • Mathematical Methods for Physics
  • Theory of Relativity
  • Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • General Relativity & Cosmology
  • Statistical Mechanics
  • Computational Physics
  • Quantum Mechanics II
  • Group Theory for Physics
  • Quantum & Classic aspects of Black Holes
  • Atomic & Molecular Physics
  • Nuclear Physics
  • Solid State Physics
  • Advanced Physics Laboratory
  • Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
  • Particle Physics
  • Quantum Information & Computation
  • Attended GR under Ashoke Sen at HRI.
  • Attended a course on Black Holes under Miguel Costa at CFP, U Porto.
  • Attended a course on AdS/CFT under Joao Penedones at CFP, U Porto.