Emeritus Professor
FASc, FNA, FTWAS, FNASc
Ph.D. Brown University
Email: bbagchi@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91 80 2293 2568
Ours is a theory group working on several frontier areas of physical chemistry/chemical physics, bio-physical chemistry and condensed matter physics. We use methods of statistical mechanics, both equilibrium and time dependent, to explore role of inter-molecular interactions in diverse observed phenomena. We often build simple models that we either simulate or solve analytically to obtain explanations of natural phenomena. Our models and theories are being widely used to understand variety of physico-chemical processes.
The areas of our study are the followings:
(i) Phase transitions: Solid-liquid transition (such as freezing-melting), nucleation and spinodal decomposition, glass transition, liquid-crystalline transitions.
(ii) Spectroscopy: Vibrational, rotational and electronic spectroscopy. For example, we are currently working on collective excitations in liquids like water, DMSO, ethanol to understand existence of low frequency collective excitations.
(iii) FRET: Energy transfer processes like Forster and exciton migration. For example, theories of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between dye molecules and metal nano particles.
(iv) Biophysics: Protein folding and unfolding, protein-DNA interaction, water around proteins and DNA (biological water), enzyme kinetics.
(v) Chemical reaction dynamics: Chemical reaction dynamics in solution such as electron and proton transfer reactions, solvation dynamics.
(vi) Transport processes: Diffusion, viscosity of liquids and electrolytes, electrochemical processes