36th Annual Report (2023-24)

186 for school students at Air Force School, Gorakhpur, on 2 Aug 2023 on 'The Moon and its Exploration (Chandrayan -3)'. 3. Dr. Apara Tripathi and Dr. Prabhunath Prasad, DDU Gorakhpur University, organised a Quiz and demonstration for Astronomy popularisation on 23 Sep 2023, celebrating International Astronomy Day. 4. 4.M.Sc. and B.Sc. students organised a Science Fair with Models, Posters and Lab visits to celebrate the Birthday of Sir C.V. Raman on 7 Oct 2023. (Mentors: Research students of the Physics Department). 5. Science Day was celebrated with Lectures, Models and Posters by students of the University, local EngineeringColleges, and other AffiliatedColleges on 28 Feb 2024. 6. Dr. Indraneel Chattopadhyay, ARIES, Nainital, visited ICARD on 1 Mar 2024 and had a discussion class on 'Cosmology andCMBR' withMSc final (Astrophysics) students. Coordinator: Dr Debbijoy Bhattacharya ICARD - Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences (MCNS), Centre of Excellence, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) (Activities from 01 April 2023 to 31 March 2024) AreaofResearch: Research MCNS researchers are involved in theoretical studies, multi-wavelength observation and associated modelling in various fields of astrophysics, which include cosmic inflation, cosmic microwave background anisotropy, dark matter, primordial black holes, High Energy Astrophysics, transient phenomena and exotic objects such as X-ray binaries, AGN, supernova and gamma-ray burst, black hole physics and astrophysical jets, solar physics and space instrumentation. TThe astrophysics and cosmology group at MCNS is actively involved in theoretical and observational research. Researchers from this group extensively use observational data fromvarious national and international observatories (e.g., JCBT-Kavalur, HCT- Hanle, ASTROSAT, Fermi, Swift, Planc k , SDSS, etc). MAHE became a member of the SKA-India Consortium in November 2023. Faculty from MCNS are actively involved in developing and characterising SUIT payload onboard India's space-based Solar observatory ADITYA-L1. Two projects received external funding during this period (details in Annexure II). The total number of research grants (sanctioned/ongoing) was five last year. Dr Suvedha Suresh Naik (presently a Postdoctoral fellow at IIA) was awarded a PhD During the last year, sixteen papers were published by the astrophysics group at MCNS. 1. Particle production during inflation: constraints expected from redshifted 21 cm observations from the epoch of reionization by Suvedha Suresh Naik, Pravabati, Chingangbam and Kazuyuki Furuuchi, 2023, Journal of Cosmology PublicationsusingICARDfacilities Explanation of Sunspots during Solar Maxima on Science Day, 28 Feb 2024 and Astroparticle Physics, 4, 058. 2. Gravitational Larmor precession by Chand r a chu r Cha k r abo r t y and Parthasarathi Majumdar, 2023, The EuropeanPhysical Journal C, 83, 714. 3. Geometric phase in Taub-NUT spacetime by Chandrachur Chakraborty and Banibrata Mukhopadhyay, 2023, The European Physical Journal C, 83- 937. 4. Adaptive friend-of-friends algorithm for identifying gravitationally bound cosmological structures”, Prateek Gupta, and Surajit Paul, 2023, Physical ReviewD, 108, 103509. 5. The Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) Onboard Intelligence for Flare Observations by Manoj Varma, Sreejith Padinhatteri, Sakya Sinha et al., 2023, Solar Physics, 298, 2, 16. 6. A Kpc-scale radio polarization study of