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I study planetary bodies in our solar system to test our understanding of important geophysical processes that are either difficult to isolate or occur within very limited conditions on Earth. One such process is tidal interaction between moons & their host planet (or the planet and the star). My research assesses the role of tidal processes in the evolution of planetary bodies in our solar system and for exoplanets. One of my key areas of interest is the interior structure and potential habitability of icy ocean worlds (e.g., Enceladus, Europa, Titan, Pluto, and Ceres) where tidal deformation is the dominant geophysical forcing - the research focuses on both the interior structure of icy ocean worlds as well as hydrothermal - ocean dynamics.
I have done extensive work on planet formation processes, especially from an observational side, analyzing IR spectroscopy from the Spitzer Space Telescope of debris disks to infer disk structure and composition. I have a few similar ongoing projects using JWST transit spectroscopy. In parallel, I am co-advising a graduate student - Matthew Bogumil, at UCLA (with Prof. Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni), working on intermediate complexity carbon cycle models for Earth-like exoplanets to understand long-term habitability as part of his NASA FINESST 2024 fellowship.
Selected Publications :
(I). Divergent behavior of hydrothermal plumes in fresh versus salty icy ocean worlds. Suyash Bire, Tushar Mittal, Wanying Kang, Ali Ramadhan, Philip Tuckman, Christopher R German, Andreas M. Thurnherr, John C Marshall, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 128(11), e2023JE007740. 2023
(II) Ocean dynamics and tracer transport over the south pole geysers of Enceladus, Wanying Kang, John Marshal, Tushar Mittal, and Suyash Bire Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 517(3), 3485-3494.
(III) How does salinity shape ocean circulation and ice geometry on Enceladus and other icy satellites?, Wanying Kang, Tushar Mittal, Suyash Bire, Jean-Michel Campin, and John Marshal, Science Advances, 8(29), eabm466 2022
(IV) Shell Structure of Enceladus from Satellite Gravity and Topography, Doug Hemingway and Tushar Mittal, Icarus 332, 111-131 2019
Work on Icy Ocean Worlds :
With Doug Hemingway, I used global gravity-topography-interior structure modeling to provide robust estimates of Enceladus’s interior structure and showed that most tidal dissipation in Enceladus occurs in the ice shell [Hemingway & Mittal, 2019]. I also used my results for Enceladus’s ice shell structure in global ocean circulation models (with oceanographers Wanying Kang & John Marshall) to demonstrate the dominant role of seawater salinity for ocean dynamics on icy moons and the strong coupling of ocean dynamics and ice shell thickness variations [Bire, Mittal et al. 2023; Kang, Mittal et al. 2022a, b].
Ongoing work includes a range of high-resolution hydrothermal plume dynamics, specifically focused on understanding the rotational fluid dynamics of a hydrothermal plume in a deep (10s km thick) ocean - the key question is determining what is the efficiency and the timescale over which fluids and particles from the ocean-core interface can get transported to the observable surface from a fluid dynamical standpoint?
Work on Planetary Dynamics :
My previous work includes the orbital dynamics for Phobos, an inwardly evolving moon of Mars. My work demonstrates that tidal processes significantly influence planetary system architecture. For instance, my analysis of the orbital evolution of Phobos showed that Phobos will likely break up to form a Martian ring system in about 20-40 Myr [Black & Mittal 2015]. Other work on planetary dynamics included analyzing coupled dust-gas hydrodynamics in proto-planetary disks.
(I) The demise of Phobos and development of a Martian ring system BA Black, T Mittal, Nature Geoscience 8 (12), 913 - 2015
(ii) Fast Modes and Dusty Horseshoes in Transitional Disks, T Mittal, and E Chiang; The Astrophysical Journal Letters 798 (1), L25 21 2014
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