Raghav (Rithya) Kunnawalkam Elayavalli

Assistant Professor of Physics

Research Interests

The primary question of their research is to chart the space-time evolution of fundamental particles such as quarks and gluons from their liberation during the moment of high energy collision to their metamorphosis into hadrons. The latter process is essentially not calculable with the energy scale squarely in the non-perturbative regime, which is why experimental measurements are key towards unlocking the physics of hadronization. Rithya’s group at Vanderbilt studies high energy collisions across a variety of systems from electron-proton, proton-proton and heavy-ions to quantify perturbative physics in both vacuum and in extreme environments such as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). These measurements are all directed at discovery physics of both the interactions and properties of the QGP and shining a light on non- perturbative and hadronization mechanisms.

 

Bio

Dr. Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli is an assistant Professor of Physics in the department of Physics and Astronomy since fall of 2023. They work primarily in the field of high energy nuclear physics since their masters at Stony Brook University back in 2011. Their masters thesis was in the setup of a simulation package for the future Electron Ion Collider called EICROOT where they studied the interaction of lepton-flavor violating processes. After doing their PhD work at Rutgers University (2013-2017) with the CMS experiment at CERN, they moved their research back to RHIC science during postdoc positions at Wayne State University (2017-2022) and Yale/BNL (2020-2022) with the STAR collaboration. At Vanderbilt University, their main focus is on the new sPHENIX experiment at RHIC and the CMS experiment at LHC along with EIC physics heading into the future. They will also be members of the JETSCAPE collaboration which includes both theorists and experimentalists.

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