Pavel’s research mainly focuses on cosmology, branch of physics that studies the evolution of the Universe on the largest scales.
As one area of his research, he has been using both numerical simulations and experimental data to investigate how to take advantage of measurements of galaxy angular momenta to improve our understanding of how the Universe works. Recently, he was a lead author on a paper that found a link between measured galaxy angular momenta and initial conditions in the nearby Universe, providing an important hint that galaxy angular momenta can serve as a cosmological probe. Potentially, this research avenue promises to help improve reconstruction of the initial conditions of the Universe, probe their non-Gaussianity and search for parity violations in a novel way.
Pavel’s contributions further include several works on the cosmic microwave background, especially regarding its gravitational lensing by the large scale structure and anomalies in the experimental data. Finally, he has also held a long term interest in anisotropies in the fluxes of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
Pavel has been a CITA postdoctoral fellow since the fall of 2018. Prior to coming to CITA, he earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.
The Tremaine Fellowship is given annually in memory of Beatrice D. and Vincent J. Tremaine to honor their lifelong interest in mathematics, science and learning. The award was initially established at CITA by Vincent Tremaine in memory of his wife Beatrice when their son, Scott Tremaine, was the first director.