Research Projects

The proposal focuses on enhancing our understanding of neutrino flavour evolution within compact astrophysical objects, particularly core-collapse supernovae (SNe), to explore fundamental questions in neutrino physics. While the Standard Model (SM) has succeeded in explaining many physical phenomena, it falls short in accounting for neutrino masses and dark matter. This project aims to use the unique environment of supernovae, where nearly all the gravitational energy is emitted as neutrinos, to investigate the physics of collective neutrino flavour oscillations. The physics of collective oscillations of neutrinos is still a major unsolved question at the heart of multi-messenger astrophysics. The answer to this question will allow us to leverage the full potential of a core-collapse supernova as an astrophysical laboratory for neutrino and dark sector physics. The project aims to tackle major questions on the impact of muon/tau neutrinos on fast collective flavour oscillations with the inclusion of inelastic collisions during flavour propagation, and the potential of future dark matter detectors to detect these non-electron flavour neutrinos. In terms of physics beyond the SM, the project targets key issues of the production of sterile neutrino dark matter, a potential and lucrative dark matter (DM) candidate, from non-standard neutrino interactions, and how it can be constrained from the observations of neutrinos from SN1987A. As different astrophysical surveys close in on the sterile neutrino DM parameter space, the constraints from anomalous cooling of SNe due to sterile neutrino emission, including a feedback effect will be investigated. Finally, the project also proposes to use the ubiquitous Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB) as a tool for probing intriguing questions about the origin of neutrino mass. This project will be a unique way to answer fundamental questions about the nature of neutrino mass through astrophysical probes. With the immense experimental program underway to detect the DSNB and neutrinos from the next galactic SN, it is timely and necessary to push our understanding of these astrophysical laboratories further, with the help of existing data and sophisticated theoretical and computational tools. The proposal is interdisciplinary, integrating particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, and aims to combine upcoming experiments and observations to strengthen constraints on new physics. The results will have a significant impact on a broad community, and help us towards our goal of multi-messenger physics.