He was a post-doctoral fellow at
Syracuse University before he returned to India. In 1967, he became a Fellow at
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. In 1969 he transferred to
IISc, Bangalore. From 1972 to 2001 he served as professor at the Center for Theoretical Studies.[1] Using the notes from Bargmann's lectures, Mukunda contributed chapters on
Lie groups to Classical Dynamics: a modern perspective that he authored with Sudarshan in 1974. The expression of symmetries on physics rests largely on Lie groups, and his later works exploit these
classical groups for physical theory. Mukunda was particularly impressed by
W. R. Hamilton's "theory of turns" (
versors), and worked to extend the use of turns in
Sp(2),
SU(1,1) and the
Lorentz group. In 1989 Mukunda,
Rajiah Simon and Sudarshan published "Hamilton’s theory of turns and a new geometrical representation for polarization optics" which developed the
coset space SU(2)/U(1) = S3/S1 as an alternative to the
Poincaré sphere in the description of
light polarization.
Mukunda and collaborators initiated the "Quantum theory of charged-particle
beam optics" in 1989 by working out the focusing action of a magnetic quadrupole using the
Dirac Equation.
He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for work in Nonlinear and Quantum Optics in 1980[5] In 2016 Mukunda gave the Fifteenth Memorial V.G. Kulkarni Lecture: "The Nature of Scientific Knowledge: some reflections".[6]
Selected publications
According to
Mathematical Reviews, Mukunda contributed to 143 scholarly publications, including
1989: (with R. Simon and George Sudarshan) "Hamilton's turns and a new geometrical representation for polarization optics",
Pramana 32(6): 769–92.
1989: (with R. Jagannathan, Rajiah Simon & E.C.G. Sudarshan) "Quantum theory of magnetic electron lenses based on the Dirac equation",
Physics Letters A 134(8/9): 457
doi:
10.1016/0375-9601(89)90685-3 bibcode = 1989PhLA..134..457J
pdf
1992: (with R. Simon) "Hamilton's turns and geometric phase for two-level systems",
Journal of Physics A 25(22): 6135–44
MR1193846
1996: "Planetary Motions and the Birth of Classical Mechanics",
Current Science 71(7): 527–32
MR1412435
1997: "Geometry, Fields, and Cosmology", Fundamental Theories of Physics 88,
KluwerMR1601142 (from First Inter-University Graduate School on Gravitation and Cosmology held in Pune, 1989)
1999: "Mathematics and the Physicist's Conception of Nature", Current Science 76(5): 634–9
MR1678395
2010: (with
Sunil Mukhi) Lectures on Advanced Mathematical Methods for Physicists,
World Scientific,
ISBN981-4299-73-1MR2777931 (Mukunda wrote part 2: Group Theory and Structure and Representations of Compact, Simple Lie Groups and Algebras.)