On July 4, 2012, scientists working at CERN in Switzerland reported the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs Boson. The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt.
However, more research work will be needed to be certain that what they see is a Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson would help explain why particles have mass, and fills a glaring hole in the current best theory to describe how the Universe works.
In the words of Paolo Giubellino, spokesperson for CERN, “India is like a historic father of the project.”
There is an intrinsic Indian connection to what is happening at CERN – Satyendranath Bose. It is Bose after whom the sub-atomic particle ‘Boson’ is named.
In 1924, Mr Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian mathematical physicist from Kolkata realised that the statistical method used to analyse most 19th century work on the thermal behaviour of gases was inadequate. He first sent off a paper on quantum statistics to a British journal, which turned it down.
He then sent it to Dr. Albert Einstein, well-known for his theory of Relativity, who immediately grasped its immense importance, and published it in a German journal. BNose’s innovation came to be known as the Bose-Einstein statistics, and became a basis of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics.
Einstein saw that it had profound implications for physics; that it had opened the way for this subatomic particle, which he named, after his Indian collaborator, “Boson.” The elusive Higgs Boson is one of the Bosons.
CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the France-Swiss border. The organization has twenty European member states, and is currently the workplace of approximately 2600 full-time employees, as well as some 7900 scientists and engineers (representing 500 universities and 80 nationalities).
Set up in a 27-kilometre-circumference underground tunnel, which straddles the Swiss French border, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) took over a decade to construct with unparalleled international participation, in which India contributed both to the accelerator and to the detectors.
A large number of Indian scientists, representing the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Harishchandra Research Institute, Allahabad and Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, were involved in the world’s most ambitious experiment over the years.
Although Bose was not awarded Nobel Prize for his work, a number of Nobel Prizes in Physics were awarded for research based on Boson.
According to Bose’s grandson Falguni Sarkar, six other physicists have won the Nobel for works in the area of Bose Einstein statistics.
Bose was awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1954. After retirement he was appointed the Vice- Chancellor of Visva Bharti University. However, in 1959 he resigned from the post to become a National Professor. Bose received affection, heroworship and veneration from his countrymen.”
The Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) was the lead laboratory under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) for the Indian collaboration in the LHC.
Besides the RRCAT, Indore based Indo-German Tool Room (IGTR) also played a major role in the development of jacks on which the 27-km long LHC is positioned.
LHC has more than 1,600 superconducting magnets along its circumference for bending and focusing the beams.
These huge magnet assemblies, each weighing more than 32 tons with a length of 15 meters, need to be positioned with a precision of 50 micrometre all along the 27 km length. RRCAT conceptualized, designed and developed precision-positioning devices that allow precise positioning of these huge magnets in the tunnel and maintenance of these devices.
These devices, called Precision Magnet Positioning System (PMPS) jacks, enable a person to move the huge magnet and position it with a very high setting resolution.
As many as 6,800 of these devices were made by the Indian firm and supplied to CERN under the agreement. More than 2,400 jacks have been shipped to CERN, after successful manufacturing and testing at IGTR, Indore and Avasarala Automation Limited, Bangalore.
Scientists at RRCAT also played a role in the measurement and analysis of Super Conducting Dipole Magnets.
Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists involved in the CERN experiment called ‘mother of all experiments’ are of Indian origin.
The prominent Indians who are part of the project include Dr. Atul Gurtu of TIFR, Dr. Vikas Sinha of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, and Dr Vinod Chohan employed by CERN to lead the group which tested the magnets. He provided admirable environment to Indian team members engaged in magnet tests and measurements at CERN.
Two Indian teams are involved in different experiments. They included a scientist couple – Dr. Sudhir Raniwala and his wife Dr Rashmi – from Jaipur.
India is part of the world-wide computational grid that will help analyse this data. The monetary contribution by India is $25 million.
And finally there is a scientist named Dr Archana Sharma, born and bred at Jhansi (UP) who is part of the team that found the particle.
She is the only Indian and a brilliant physicist working at CERN for nearly two decades.
After getting her post-graduate degree in science from Banaras Hindu University and Ph.D. in particle physics from Delhi University, in 1989, Archana came to CERN as a student in the famous Charpak – Sauli group of physicists engaged in research on fundamental particles.
After holding many temporary jobs, where she worked mainly on the development of particle detectors, she joined CERN in 2001. She also holds a Doctorate degree (D.Sc) in particle physics from the University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland as well as an MBA degree from International University Geneva.
Archana works in the detector research group at CERN. She is a staff physicist at CERN and played a key role in the development of Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector that has found Higgs Boson – the ‘God Particle’. She also took the initiative to involve Indian students in the activities of CERN. (PTI)
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