Prashant Kocherlakota
Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-present)
Harvard University, U.S.A.
***
Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2022)
Relativistic Astrophysics Group
Institute for Theoretical Physics
Goethe University Frankfurt
***
Ph.D. in Physics (2020)
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
Curriculum Vitae
Postdoctoral Work
My recent focus has been on studying various well-known black hole and non-black hole spacetimes from theories of gravity that have been proposed as alternatives to general relativity, with the specific aim of testing the classical theory of gravity against observations obtained from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and the upcoming next-generation EHT (ngEHT). A complementary program that has emerged, to test the strong-field metric outside supermassive compact objects, has used theory-agnostic frameworks to better explore possibilities beyond the confines of the known set of gravity theories, in which also I have taken part.
Selected Work:
The EHT Collaboration et al. [2022], "First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. I.-VI."
P. Kocherlakota and L. Rezzolla [2022], "Distinguishing Gravitational and Emission Physics in Black-Hole Imaging: Spherical Symmetry"
P. Kocherlakota, L. Rezzolla et al. (The EHT Collaboration) [2021], "Constraints on Black-Hole Charges with the 2017 EHT Observations of M87*"
P. Kocherlakota and L. Rezzolla [2020], "Accurate mapping of spherically symmetric black holes in a parametrized framework"
Doctoral Work
Over the course of my M.Sc. and Ph.D., I worked on the formation, stability and detection of black holes and other exotic objects.
My doctoral thesis, "On the Stability and Detection of Compact Objects in General Relativity" is available here.
Selected Work:
P. Kocherlakota and P. S. Joshi [2019], "An Approach to Stability Analyses in General Relativity via Symplectic Geometry"
P. Kocherlakota et al. [2019], "Gravitomagnetism and Pulsar Beam Precession near a Kerr Black Hole"
R. Shaikh, P. Kocherlakota, R. Narayan, and P. S. Joshi [2019], "Shadows of Spherically Symmetric Black Holes and Naked Singularities"
K.-I. Nakao et al. [2018], "On the stability of a superspinar"
Academic History
B.Tech in Engineering Physics (2013)
Department of Physics
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
M.Sc. in Physics (2019)
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai
Ph.D. in Physics (2020)
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai