An overview of my research

This is a layperson summary of the type of research I do, for more technical details please see my papers below.

If I were to ask you for a complete physical description of water, it's quite likely your mind would immediately jump to the liquid phase of water, like the type in your water bottle now. Water, as a liquid, can be thought of as layers of molecules of H20 which slide past each other. You know water in other phases too; ice and steam. Ice is the solid phase of water and may be thought of as the same H20 molecules arranged in a lattice. Steam is the gaseous phase of water and it may be thought of as individual molecules of water which bounce around and collide with each other (with some small interactions).

The question of a complete physical description of water is a challenging one, since although water is still just molecules of H20, their behaviour can be vastly different depending on what phase it is in! A useful physical characterisation of water is to identify its phases and how to transition between them. You already know how to do these phase transitions in your everyday life, for example you could heat up ice which melts into liquid water and then boils to steam. You could also increase the pressure which would compress the molecules bringing them closer on average i.e. going from steam to liquid to solid. One thing that summarises the phases of water is the phase diagram, which tells you the phase that water is in at a given temperature and pressure. Here's a picture below (from Siemens Stiftung Media Portal):

My research is about understanding the phase diagrams of certain supersymmetric particle models. Just like how molecules of H20 were the building blocks of the phases of water, certain particles called quarks and monopoles are the building blocks for the models I study. The different phases of a supersymmetric particle model refers to the types of composite objects the quarks and the monopoles can form, how they interact with each other, and what symmetries they enjoy. These phases can also be summarised in a phase diagram. How do we get between the different phases of these models? Instead of temperature and pressure, like in the case of water, the supersymmetric models have parameters called moduli which may give different phases at certain values of the moduli. The parameter space of the moduli is called the moduli space.

Publications (Authors listed in alphabetical order, * denotes corresponding author):

1.           S. Bennett, A. Hanany, and G. Kumaran*, “Quotient quiver subtraction — Classical groups”, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2026, 90 (2026).

2.           S. Bennett, A. Hanany, G. Kumaran, and L. Mansi, “Symmetry mitosis and Hasse diagram diamonds: a note on brane configurations with ON0 planes”, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2026, 131 (2026). 

3.           S. Bennett, A. Hanany, and G. Kumaran, “Orthosymplectic quotient quiver subtraction. Part II. Framed quivers”, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2025, 46 (2025). 

4.           S. Bennett, A. Hanany, G. Kumaran, C. Li, D. Liu, and M. Sperling, “Quiver subtraction on the Higgs branch”, Nuclear Physics B, Volume 1016, 2025, 116917, ISSN 0550-3213.

5.           S. Bennett, A. Hanany, and G. Kumaran*, “Orthosymplectic quotient quiver subtraction”, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2024, 63 (2024). 

6.           A. Hanany, R. Kalveks, and G. Kumaran*, “Quiver polymerisation”, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2024, 168 (2024). 

7.           A. Hanany, G. Kumaran, C. Li. D. Liu, and M. Sperling, “Actions on the quiver: discrete quotients on the Coulomb branch”, Journal High Energy Phyics, 2024, 318 (2024).

8.           A. Hanany, R. Kalveks, and G. Kumaran*, “Quotient quiver subtraction”, Nuclear Physics B, vol. 1009, 2024, 116731, ISSN 0550-3213.

MSc Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces, Imperial College London, dissertation, September 2022.

Discrete Gauging, Folding, and hyper-K¨ahler Quotients of Coulomb Branches of 3d N = 4 Quiver Gauge Theories