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A big day for Jaipur physicist couple — they did their bit for collider test

Rashmi Raniwala

JAIPUR: The day the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tests began in Europe turned out to be big for the Jaipur physicist couple Sudhir Raniwala and Rashmi also.

Though not physically present to witness the mother of all experiments in the recent times along with the immediate CERN team on the Swiss-French border, the couple did not miss the excitement a bit on Wednesday.

The Raniwalas, both associate professors in the Rajasthan University’s Physics Department, were part of the 30-member team of Indian scientists chosen by the Department of Atomic Energy’s Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre in Kolkata to develop one of the Photon Multiplicity Detectors (PMDs) used in the LHC. There were 15 PMDs which are to recreate, in the current experiment, conditions that supposedly existed just after the Big Bang.

“Our PMD pertains the ALICE (A Large Iron Collider Experiment) meant to generate quark-gluon plasma matter present at the time of the creation of the universe,” Professor Raniwala told The Hindu.

“Our PMD was completely indigenous—the concept, design, fabrication and installation,” the proud professor, who had been to Geneva in this connection, said. The Indian PMD was transported to Geneva from Kolkata in February this year.

While Professor Sudhir Raniwala has been associated with the project since 1992 onwards his wife joined the team sometime in 1999. Other than the twosome from the Rajasthan University, rest of the team of scientists came from the faculties of the Jammu University, Panjab University, IIT Mumbai and Institute of Physics, Bhubaneshwar.

Sudhir Raniwala

Yet it was not all fun for the Raniwalas watching the initial tests of the world’s largest particle collider as a lot of prestige is involved in the performance of the individual detectors as well.

“The moment you put a detector in any experiment it has to be justified by the outcome whichever way it turns out to be. The detectors are very expensive,” Professor Raniwala said.

And how far he is optimistic about the outcome of the search for the Higgs Boson (particles in the background), or what is popularly referred as the elusive, “God Particle?”

“Either way it is going to be great. If they find it then it is a never-before situation but even otherwise what all comes out from the experiment are to be of great significance,” he said.

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