Under the Southern Cross

Here  is a much delayed post again,  about a short sojourn in a far away place which somehow conveys a sense of being not unlike home. This was South America again, this time Argentina and Brazil.  As always, the visas came through on departure date minus one, the ministry of civil aviation maintained strict silence in response to frantic emails, Mumbai airport flooded, and friendly souls  in Admin 1  maintained that it will all work out by DDay.  (It did!) Here is  a picture of  Mumbai airport, looking not at all flooded, and rather futuristic.

No time for stop overs, alas, despite the exotic nature of the stop, and a first visit to Africa: Addis  Ababa in Ethiopia.  The  airport looks like a beat up version of Brussels airport but is full of a colorful mix of races and nations. A  long haul to Buenos Aires, passing through Sao Paolo.

So here is Buenos Aires, on a cold morning, it's winter in the southern hemisphere. A bustling and sophisticated city, the Paris of South America, looking a trifle frayed at the edges. All South American economies have taken a hit, since the last visit, in 2013, just like ours has. It's also been a little perverse, just like us. The skyscrapers are the view from the Catholic University. The obelisk is the obelisk in the City Center,

Next stop, the famed  University of Buenos Aires, with its tragic wall, a list of all the students, faculty and staff who have joined the ranks of the missing, but on more cheerful note, Prof. Gabriel Mindlin's lab, and it's analysis of birdsong.  We happen to be around on Argentina's national day, so the city centre hosts a parade, complete with drums and schoolgirls dressed up in spanish crinolines.

 Last of all,  the Casa Rosada, the Argentinian presidential palace.  Eva Peron and Juan Peron used to stand in the balcony where you see the Argentinian flag, and address rousing revolutionary speeches to the crowds assembled below (probably the Argentinian equivalent of the sans culottes, to mix up countries, continents and centuries). The Peronistas  are alive and well in current day Argentina, though not exactly in power.

There was tango in  the streets, and a lovely market in the old quarter, no pictures alas!
Finally,  back again to Sao Paulo, a week of hectic work, and a flight home again,  via Africa.
No one asked for the dreaded yellow fever certificate, acquired at great expense of time and money on a previous trip. Adios  Argentina, don't cry for  me. I will be back once I forget the jet lag!


This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao (who was present on Whatsapp).

Patriotism : Real and Fake

This year  was  the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, a major incident in the freedom struggle. There is no doubt that the massacre, and the outrage it provoked, triggered an outpouring of patriotism, and sacrifice which crystallized the nationalist movement and provided a focus for resistance against  British rule.

The basic facts of the massacre are known to every Indian school child. On 13th April 1919, there was a peaceful meeting scheduled in the walled open ground called Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. About 1500 people were gathered in the enclosure to protest against the infamous orders promulgated in Amritsar against public gatherings. This was the point at which Brigadier  General Reginald  Dyer, the military administrator of Amritsar, decided that these hapless subjects had to be taught that the orders of the administration could not be defied. He arrived on the scene with a company of Gorkha troops in an armoured car. Fortunately for the hapless citizenry, the armoured car could not enter the narrow entrance to the Bagh. Those who have seen Richard Attenborough's movie Gandhi, will recall the chilling scene of the troops running through the narrow alley seen below.

The troops took position on the narrow plinth inside the Bagh. They were given instructions to fire on the crowd, which tried to flee by climbing on the steep walls or taking refuge in the well below. The troops fired 1650 rounds, leaving 379 people dead, and  1100 injured, by some estimates. Other estimates are even higher. Photos of the dead and the testimony of the injured can be seen in the little museum near  the well, where hundreds jumped to save themselves, and many died.
The bullet holes can be seen in the walls.

The incident provoked outrage through the country. There were huge protests. Dignitaries returned British honours, among them Rabindranath Tagore. Dyer was supported by  conservatives in England, but opposed by liberals. An investigation committee of  the British Parliament  removed him from his appointment,  and prohibited him from further employment in India. The seething anger in the Indian populace united  the subcontinent and led to the Non-coperation movement of 1920. That was real patriotism indeed!

Visitors to Amritsar flock to Jalianwala Bagh, but also now have another patriotic destination. The Attari/Wagah border, 60 kms from Amritsar, where Indian and Pakistani troops each flaunt their own patriotism. The BSF puts up a good show, showcasing its own achievements, including its canine counterparts.  The Indian side blares patriotic songs, inviting the ladies present to dance (and some do). The Pakistani side counters with the Koran (or what sounds like it). The grass is greener on the Pakistani side (that's easy, the Indian side is concrete). People cross the border on foot, the elderly on wheel chairs, luggage on trolleys, exchanging porters at the gate. The rest of the crowd leaves for Amritsar, in a glow of patriotism, but is it real?

The  country is at the crossroads, redefining its notion of patriotism. Is it necessary that a sense of self can only be achieved by trampling on the sense of self of others? Some say the road has already been chosen.  If so, maybe it is time for the second non-cooperation movement.   Who is wrong, and who is right? Time will tell. It always does!

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.

Rahul Basu 04/03/1956-05/03/2011

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

T.S. Elliot

This  blog post is by Neelima  Gupte and Sumathi Rao

The IPA Rahul Basu Memorial Award Ceremony 2018

The award ceremony for the Rahul Basu Memorial Award for the best thesis in High Energy Physics in the years 2016-2018 took place on 13th December 2018 during the DAE symposium held at IIT Madras. As in other years, two nominees Dr. Apratim Kaviraj and Dr  Ipsita  Saha  win   selected for the award, and two nominees, Dr Taushif  Ahmed and Dr Rusa Mandal received honourable mention for their contributions. All four awardees   presented their work at the award ceremony, Dr Kaviraj and Dr Mandal  in person,  and Dr Saha and Dr Ahmed via Skype.

Dr. Kaviraj gave a very clear and comprehensive talk on the bootstrap method, and how it could be applied to the AdS/CFT correspondence. This area is notorious for the incomprehensibility of its papers,and to hear it explained so clearly was a rare experience. Dr Kaviraj's own thesis contained a significant new step in incorporating Witten diagrams and the use of the Mellin space, which simplifies the computations significantly, to a point where the computation can be automated. New results which demonstrated the power of the new technique were also obtained. This was truly a thesis which was worthy of the award.

 Dr Ipsita Saha gave a talk on Skype on her thesis on her  study of the physics beyond the  SM at the LHC in the light of dark matter searches. She summarised both the successes and the shortcomings of the Standard Model, and the current efforts to go beyond the standard model. Her work focussed on the efforts togo beyond the standard model by incorporating additional features to the theory. She discussed the implications of the addition of a scalar doublet for the vacuum stability problem, the addition of complex scalar triplet for the neutrino mass problem, and that of the addition of a complex scalar triplet plus real singlet for dark matter. The experimental signatures of the theoretical calculations were also touched upon.

Dr. Taushif Ahmed also gave his talk on Skype. His talk was on QCD radiative corrections to Higgs physics. He explained clearly why  it was necessary to go beyond the leading order corrections to make quantitatively correct corrections for the Higgs Boson cross sections, as well as rapidity distributions and form factors  for Drell Yan processes. Factorisation methods were incorporated to obtain very accurate and reliable  results.

Dr Rusa Mandal was present to give her talk in person. She spoke on rare B decays and new physics. She analysed decays of the B meson to K plus leptons type via parametric forms of the Standard Model amplitude eliminated hadronic contributions, and obtained results  independent of nonfactorisable contributions with minimal dependence on form factors. This is a new technique which could be generalised to other cases.

The awards were presented by Prof. G. Rajasekaran,  one of India's  most senior high enegy physicists, and a former colleague of Prof. Rahul Basu's at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.  He  concluded with a short remembrance of Rahul,  and how his contribution in all spheres was missed by his colleagues, several of whom were present at the ceremony.

The award committee consisted of Bedangadas Mohanty (Chair), Sunanda Bannerjee, Debayoti Chowdhuri, Debashis Ghoshal, Rohini Godbole, Sourendu Gupta, Neelima Gupte, and Sunil Mukhi.
The award  committee worked very hard to carry out the herculean task of going through all the nominations and  coming to a unanimous conclusion. They also consulted a number of experts outside the committee. Heartfelt  thanks are due to all, and most especially to Prof. Bedangadas  Mohanty, the  committee chair, and his meticulous organisation of the entire process. Due to their continuing effort, and also due to unstinted support from the Indian Physics Association, the award has now got established  in the high energy physics community. Students in the area now vie for the award and are inspired by the talks and the professional level of the awardees.

We hope this award will contribute further to increasing the activity and contributions of the high energy physics community of  India.

This blog  post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.


Photos: First photo : Dr. Apratim Kaviraj and Prof.  G. Rajasekaran.
             Second photo: Dr. Rusa  Mandal  and Prof. G. Rajasekaran
             Dr. Ipsita Saha and Dr. Taushif Ahmed can be seen on the
             screen in both photos.


Tailpiece:

L-R:   Drs. G.D. Date, M.V.N. Murthy, Rahul Basu and Matthias Brack in the IMSc GH porch,  sometime in the early 90-s. (Photo credit: Matthias Brack).