Portrait of Suniti Sanghavi

About

Data Scientist, Science Data Modeling & Computing Group
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

I work on the theory and numerical methods of polarized radiative transfer and their application to remote sensing of planetary atmospheres: retrievals of aerosols, clouds, greenhouse gases and solar-induced fluorescence from Earth-observing satellites, the effects of rotational and vibrational Raman scattering, and spectropolarimetric modeling of brown dwarfs and directly imaged exoplanets. I lead the scientific development of vSmartMOM, a linearized vector radiative transfer code, and am the radiative transfer lead of the Carbon-I mission concept team.

Ph.D. and Diploma in Physics, Heidelberg University · B.Sc. in Physics, University of Mumbai

Research Publications Software CV Google Scholar GitHub

Key research areas

Radiative transfer theory

Vector (polarized) radiative transfer with the matrix-operator adding–doubling method, linearized analytically so that Jacobians with respect to aerosol, surface and gas parameters come with the forward calculation. Related work covers first-principles Cabannes and Raman optical properties of N₂ and O₂, Fourier expansion of Mie scattering matrices, δ-m and δ-fit truncation for polarized transfer, coupled canopy–atmosphere transfer, and a semi-analytic 3D framework for oblate, cloudy brown dwarfs.

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layer 1: R₁, T₁ layer 2: R₂, T₂ F₀ R₁₂ T₁₂ R₁₂ = R₁ + T₁ R₂ (E − R₁ R₂)⁻¹ T₁ T₁₂ = T₂ (E − R₁ R₂)⁻¹ T₁ Stokes vector IQUV R, T: 4×4 blocks per angle and Fourier moment + analytic ∂R/∂x

High-performance software

I originally wrote vSmartMOM in Fortran and C++. It is now the open-source Julia package vSmartMOM.jl, whose scientific development I lead. Companion packages provide molecular absorption from HITRAN and ExoMol, canopy and ocean optics, brown-dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres, and instrument line shapes. The same code runs on CPUs and GPUs.

Software and milestones →

vSmartMOM.jl polarized RT · Raman · Jacobians AtmosphericAbsorption.jl HITRAN · ExoMol · GPU CanopyOptics.jl leaf optics · leaf angles OceanOptics.jl water optical properties ExoOptics.jl brown dwarfs · exoplanets InstrumentOperator.jl instrument line shapes Fortran / C++ original code CPU GPU

Earth’s atmosphere

The radiance measured from orbit results from scattering by molecules, aerosols and clouds, line-by-line absorption by trace gases, inelastic Raman scattering, and interaction with the surface — a vegetation canopy, soil or ocean. My work addresses how these processes affect retrievals of aerosols, clouds, CO₂, CH₄ and solar-induced fluorescence from instruments such as OCO-2/3, GOSAT, MISR and SCIAMACHY, including a Raman-scattering correction for SIF retrievals. I am the radiative transfer lead of the Carbon-I mission concept team.

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Anatomy of a remote-sensing measurement Left: sunlight entering an atmospheric column is scattered by molecules, clouds and aerosols, absorbed by trace gases, shifted in wavelength by Raman scattering, multiply scattered in a vegetation canopy that also emits fluorescence, and refracted into the ocean, before reaching a satellite. Right: the resulting reflectance spectrum from 400 to 2400 nm with absorption bands of O3, O2, H2O, CO2, CH4 and N2O, and a zoom into the O2 A-band showing individual absorption lines. ozone layer canopy + soil ocean satellite What the satellite measures 5001000 15002000 nm reflectance 758 nm771 nm Zoom: the O₂ A-band at 0.01 nm Every dip is an individual rotational line — hundreds per band, thousands across the spectrum, each shaped by pressure and temperature.
Schematic. Hover over a gas or a process to highlight it; click the column to pause. Spectrum generated by scripts/make_spectrum.jl from simplified line lists — illustrative, not a radiative transfer calculation.

Planets beyond Earth

Photopolarimetric and spectropolarimetric modeling of brown dwarfs and directly imaged exoplanets. For HWO, multi-epoch ultraviolet observables — lightcurve shape, UV intensity and polarization colors, and degree of polarization — constrain the scattering state independently of planetary radius and so address the radius–albedo degeneracy of reflected-light detections (Sanghavi, West & Chen 2026).

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0.5 R⊕ 2.6 R⊕
Schematic: for a fixed reflected-light contrast (∝ albedo × radius²), plausible albedos of 0.05–0.8 (shaded band) allow radii spanning a factor of four — a factor of ~60 in volume. Radius-free polarimetric and UV observables constrain the scattering state first, which narrows this range.

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