I’m Sanika (pronounced Saa-nee-kah) from Mulund, a small suburb in Mumbai, India. I am a third-year graduate student working with Prof. Bangalore Sathyaprakash at the PAX group. I completed an integrated bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and a master’s in Physics from BITS Pilani in India. During that time, I developed a deep fascination with neutron stars and decided to pursue a PhD at Penn State to study them more closely. At Penn State, I’m exploring the many facets of neutron stars. From using gravitational waves to infer their properties in binary mergers to studying how exotic forms of matter might exist inside them, I approach neutron stars from multiple angles. My goal is to incrementally deepen our understanding of their equation of state.
If you’re curious to find out more about my research, feel free to check out my website linked below!
Click here to view my website
Publications
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Matthew Evans,
others,
"Cosmic Explorer: A Submission to the NSF MPSAC ngGW Subcommittee." (2023)
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Ish Gupta,
others,
"Characterizing gravitational wave detector networks: from A^♯ to cosmic explorer." Class. Quant. Grav. 41 24 (2024)
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Sanika Khadkikar,
Adriana Raduta,
Micaela Oertel,
Armen Sedrakian,
"Maximum mass of compact stars from gravitational wave events with finite-temperature equations of state." Phys. Rev. C 103 5 (2021)
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Sanika Khadkikar,
Chatrik Mangat,
Sarmistha Banik,
"Quasi-stationary sequences of hyper massive neutron stars with exotic equations of state." (2022)
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Sanika Khadkikar,
Ish Gupta,
Rahul Kashyap,
Koustav Chandra,
Rossella Gamba,
Bangalore Sathyaprakash,
"Cosmic Calipers: Precise and Accurate Neutron Star Radius Measurements with Next-Generation Gravitational Wave Detectors." (2025)