DAMP Physics, IITB

The High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation(KEK), invited 10 sophomores from EP, to work on various projects, for a duration of 3 weeks, beginning 11 May. This cam under the Japanese government’s Sakura Science Program. This came under the KEK has two campuses - one in Tsukuba which is an electron-positron accelerator and the other in Tokai on the east coast. The Tokai campus goes by the name JPARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex). As the name states, JPARC is a proton accelerator. We were invited to the Tsukuba campus which is about 70km from Tokyo. Our airfare was covered and we received a generous amount of money for day to day use. We were divided into 3 groups, with each group working under the supervision of a Professor. 1. Detection of CMB through Radio analysis of the sky spectrum Gurbir, Yashvi, and Viraj worked on this project. The CMB group at KEK had developed KUMoDES, a radio system spinoff of a cosmic microwave background detector, which uses t...

Field: Experimental Particle Physics Over the period of June- July 2017, I worked under the guidance of Prof. Yoshitaka Kuno at Osaka University, on the readout and trigger electronics as part of the multinational COMET Collaboration. WORK   In particular, I worked on the readout for the Cylindrical Drift Chamber, implementing a Bonsai Boosted Decision Tree as a Level-I Trigger to decide which events could match our expected signal. This involved working with the Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA, which would form the basis for the final design. I implemented the softcore PicoBlaze microprocessor to interface with the PC, the FPGA and the Flash Module. Following this, I used an FPGA-optimized implementation of the Circle Hough Transform to examine the tracks left by the particles, and identify the circular paths which were of interest.   BACKGROUND The prerequisites were primarily a solid background in Digital Electronics, along with rudimentary High  Energy P...

I spent my second year summer as a research intern at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in Prof. Sriram Ramaswamy’s group. My work was broadly in the area of theoretical non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Background Prior to this internship, I had been working on a project (under Prof. Amitabha Nandi) on the modelling of collective motion in self-propelled particle systems. So, in a way, I already had some exposure, albeit limited, to this relatively new field of research called ‘active matter’, and had developed quite a bit of interest in the work. This led me to apply to soft condensed matter physics groups around the world. The apping experience is something that only those who have done it can explain. After weeks of writing emails, and applying for scholarship programs, I ended up getting accepted for the Indian Science Academies’ summer research fellowship program, which provided funding for me to take up the position offered by my prof. The Group Th...