Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF)

   My research interest particularly lies in investigating the dynamics of a specific category of galaxy, known as the lopsided galaxy. Disk galaxies exhibit various non-axisymmetric features in their disc morphology. The well-known asymmetries that develop in the disc are the bars and spiral arms. Lopsidedness is another promiscuous non-axisymmetric feature in the galactic disc where the gas or stellar component of the galaxy is much extended along one half of the galactic disk than that along the other half. Lopsidedness can also be attributed to the presence of a bar that is offset from the center of the galaxy. Numerical simulations show that minor mergers, tidal interactions with the neighboring galaxies, or asymmetrical accretion of gas, are the possible cause of lopsidedness. However, the state-of-the-art simulation results could not explain several independent statistical properties of the observed lopsided galaxies which also includes the presence of lopsidedness in isolated galaxies. Further, the ubiquity and hence the stability of lopsided features of a galaxy is a dynamical problem which is not clearly understood yet. The main objective of my research is to systematically investigate the origin of disk lopsidedness using orbital dynamics, numerical simulations and machine learning techniques.