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Research

    I recently received my Ph.D. in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania, where for the past six years, I have been working for Prof. Masao Sako on understanding the properties of galaxies that host Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia).   SNe Ia are brilliant explosions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs that explode with roughly the same intrinsic brightness and are thus known as "standard candles."   This property makes them extremely useful for determining distances in the Universe.   We have examined SN Ia host galaxy properties using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) Supernova Survey sample and archived host data from SDSS (optical), GALEX (UV), and UKIDSS (near-IR).   We have also derived host properties from galaxy spectra obtained from various telescopes.   The hope is to understand any correlations between properties of SNe Ia and their host galaxies that can help reduce the scatter in the distance-redshift relation, which is crucial in constraining cosmological parameters.

My other research interests include dark energy and the expansion of the Universe, the nature of dark matter, and gradually trying to figure out what 95% of the Universe is made of.   I am also involved with the Supernova Working Group of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), now up and running.

In the past, my work has included X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical sources and nuclear physics.



Click here to download .pdf of my Great Lakes Cosmology Workshop 2010 Talk (14-16 June 2010)


Publications

Brian T. Hayden, Ravi R. Gupta, Peter M. Garnavich, Filippo Mannucci, Robert C. Nichol, Masao Sako. "The Fundamental Metallicity Relation Reduces Type Ia SN Hubble Residuals More than Host Mass Alone." The Astrophysical Journal. 761 (2013):191-202.   arXiv e-print: [1212.4848]

Chris B. D'Andrea, Ravi R. Gupta, Masao Sako, Matt Morris, Robert C. Nichol, Peter J. Brown, Heather Campbell, Matthew D. Olmstead, Joshua A. Frieman, Peter M. Garnavich, Saurabh W. Jha, Richard Kessler, Hubert Lampeitl, John Marriner, Donald P. Schneider, and Mathew Smith. "Spectroscopic Properties of Star-forming Host Galaxies and Type Ia Supernova Hubble Residuals in a Nearly Unbiased Sample." The Astrophysical Journal. 743 (2011):172-184.   arXiv e-print: [1110.5517]

Ravi R. Gupta, Chris B. D'Andrea, Masao Sako, Charlie Conroy, Mathew Smith, Bruce Bassett, Joshua A. Frieman, Peter M. Garnavich, Saurabh W. Jha, Richard Kessler, Hubert Lampeitl, John Marriner, Robert C. Nichol, and Donald P. Schneider. "Improved Constraints on Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxy Properties Using Multi-wavelength Photometry and Their Correlations with Supernova Properties." The Astrophysical Journal. 740 (2011):92-104.   arXiv e-print: [1107.6003]

J. R. Peterson, J. G. Jernigan, R. R. Gupta, J. Bankert and S. M. Kahn. "Evidence for Nonlinear Growth of Structure from an X-Ray-Selected Cluster Survey using a Novel Joint Analysis of the Chandra and XMM-Newton Archives." The Astrophysical Journal. 707 (2009):878-889.   arXiv e-print: [0911.1327]

M. F. Gu, R. Gupta, J. R. Peterson, M. Sako and S. M. Kahn. "Capella Corona Revisited: A Combined View from XMM-Newton RGS and Chandra HETGS and LETGS." The Astrophysical Journal. 649 (2006):979-991.   arXiv e-print: [astro-ph/0606283]

Duane R. Doty, Henry J. Scudder, III, Ravi R. Gupta, and Carlos Y. Saa. "Why the near field radiation from a large distributed source is independent of position." American Journal of Physics. April 2007 — Volume 75, Issue 4, pp. 356-360.