Dr. Sushant Kumar Singh has been awarded the prestigious S.N. Ghosal Award for being recognized as the best Young Physicist at the Young Physicists' Colloquium 2023. The event, hosted by the Indian Physical Society, took place during August 24-25, 2023, at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. Out of 52 applications from across the country, Dr. Singh was one of the 17 young physicists under the age of 35 who presented their research work at the Colloquium. Dr. Singh's presentation was titled "Spin Polarization of Lambda Hyperons as an Indicator of QCD Critical Point."

The research addresses one of the outstanding problems in physics - locating the critical point in the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram. Dr. Singh's collaborative study with Prof. Jane Alam shows that the suppression in the rapidity distribution of spin polarization of Lambda hyperons can serve as a potential indicator of the QCD critical point. In the high-energy collisions of heavy ions, a fireball of quarks and gluons is created. This fireball possesses significant angular momentum that is conserved in the absence of external torques. As the fireball decays into hadrons, the net polarization aligns itself with the angular momentum direction. The magnitude of the spin polarization observed in experiments depends on the time evolution of local vortices within the fluid-like fireball, which is influenced by transport properties such as shear and bulk viscosity. Dr. Singh's research findings suggest that near the critical point, the enhanced viscosity of the fluid leads to faster dissipation of local vortices, resulting in the predicted suppression of spin polarization.  The main findings of this work are published in Eur. Phys. J. C (2023) 83:585, along with complementary results in Phys. Rev. D 107, 074042 (2023).

Calcutta edition of the leading Indian English daily “The Telegraph” featured three scientists of our group: Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya, Dr. Parnika Das and Dr. Sarmistha  Bhattacharyya.

Chandana is leading a group of scientists in the country for building hundreds of neutron detectors to be used for experiments at VECC as well as at the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Germany.  She is also the Head of the Experimental Nuclear Physics Division at VECC.  Parnika is building a device that can trap a single atom to measure it’s mass precisely. Sarmistha, a well-known experimentalist in the country is basically involved in research to understand the nature of fundamental force that binds nuclei.

Anasuya Basu, the reporter of The Telegraph unveils the interesting story of the grooming up of these FAIR ladies and their love for Physics.

Sarmistha, the leader of the Public Awareness Cell of VECC feels happy to see the newspaper report. “Although I prefer to consider myself only as a physicist, but I will be glad if this report inspires young girls to take science as a career”, said Sarmistha.    

The report of The Telegraph, published on 7th December 2017, can be found in this link:

https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/fair-ladies-call-nuclear-shots/cid/1395200

Dr. Tilak Kumar Ghosh and Dr. Gargi Chaudhuri of our group were awarded with the “Scientific & Technical Excellence Award” for the year 2016 in recognition of their outstanding contributions in their research work. Dr. Swagata Mallik was selected for the the prestigious "Young Scientist Award" 2016.

The awards were given in a ceremony held in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai on 30th October, 2017.

Trillions of them are passing through your body in every second, yet you can't notice them. Even you are producing millions of then in every day. After the photon, they are the second most abundant particle in this universe, called neutrino. Knowing their nature is very difficult as they are extremely shy to interact. Till date 8 scientists have already bagged Nobel prizes for their research to bring out some features of them.

"But the fun has just began," said Prof.  Naba K. Mondal. "New experiments revealing the nature of neutrinos can provide  answers to the most fundamental questions like why our universe is only matter dominated,  though we had equal amount of anti-matter during the birth (big bang) of this universe", he added during his evening lecture for the students attending school on nuclear astrophysics being held at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre.

Photo: A slide from Prof. Mondal’s evening lecture, showing the plan of an underground laboratory and associated facilities at Pottipuram in Bodi West hills of Theni district of Tamil Nadu. The construction couldn’t be started as the local people has  been made to believe by some people that neutrino is hazardous. 

Nature journal identified few such pioneering experiments that are planned to be carried out in next decade to reveal the mysteries of neutrino. One such experimental facility will be the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), an underground laboratory at Bodi hill near Madurai. Although the scientists are ready with the 1st set of detectors ,but the laboratory which is to be built  at  end of a 2 km long tunnel under a mountain, couldn’t be ready as the local people has been made to believe by some people that neutrino is hazardous.

“Development of such experimental facility will not only help Indian scientists to carry out front ranking research in the exciting area of neutrino physics, but also boost Indian industry to develop cutting edge technology as INO requires massive 50 kilo ton magnet, 30000 particle detectors and sophisticated state of the art electronics”, said Prof. Mondal who was the spokesperson of INO and currently the Raja Ramanna  Fellow at Saha Institute of  Nuclear Physics. 

Dr. Swagato Mallik has been awarded with the C.V.K Baba memorial prize for the best thesis presentation in the 61st DAE symposiumin Nuclear Physics  held at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata in December 2016. The award comprises of a certificate and  a handful of cash prize. About 20 young  nuclear physicists  presented their thesis(posters) in the symposium.  A board of judges selected the best three presentations for oral presentation from which Dr Mallik’s thesis was chosen to be the best.

Photo (courtesy: symposium website): Swagato receiving the best thesis award from Dr. Ajit K Mahanty, Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics.

Swagato has made remarkable contribution to both statistical and dynamical theories of nuclear multifragmentation in his thesis work. Along with his collaborators, he has 10 international journal publications [4  in Phys. Lett. B, 6 in Phys. Rev. C (1 Rapid communication) and 5 regular articles]  relevant to the thesis work.

Photo (courtesy: symposium website) Swagato presenting his thesis work at the Meghnad Saha Auditorium

Congratulations to Dr. Mallik from Physics Group!

Dr. Tapan Kumar Rana has been awarded with the DAE Young Scientist Award (YSA) for the year 2015 in recognition of his outstanding research work in Experimental Nuclear Physics. The award comprises of a citation and a medal apart from a handful of cash prize.

Dr. Rana has been involved in high quality basic nuclear physics experiments, over a decade, exclusively done in various accelerator facilities within India. He has also been involved in the development of several unique experimental facilities, which have been developed for the first time in India.

His pioneering work on the famous Hoyle state is acclaimed worldwide by the scientists in this field. The Hoyle state is a resonant state (0₂⁺ state at 7.654 MeV above the ground state) of ¹²C just above the 3α decay threshold named after Fred Hoyle who postulated this state to explain the abundance of Carbon in the universe. In his work Dr. Rana has performed a high statistics, high resolution, complete kinematical measurement (using a beam from VEC) of 3α-decay of the Hoyle state of ¹²C. This type of experiment is done for the first time in India. 

Apart from this, he has done some good work in various algorithms of nuclear temperature measurement, effect of clustering on fragment emission mechanism, study of isospin analog states using one nucleon transfer reaction, excited states of the Hoyle state in ¹²C and the Hoyle analogue states in ¹⁶O. Dr. Rana with his colleagues have successfully designed and developed a large high resolution Si-Strip, Si-Strip, CsI(Tl) detector array for nuclear reaction studies, which is an unique facility  ever made in the country, also unique and rare in many respect  even at international level. He has developed the Monte Carlo Simulation program and the event reconstruction technique for the data analysis on ROOT platform for the above mentioned high resolution multi-telescopes array for physics extraction. 

Congratulations Dr. Tapan Kumar Rana! You truly deserve this award.

Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, Raja Ramanna Fellow at our Centre is currently in UK to deliver the Homi Bhabha Lecture series. Institute of Physics (IOP) interviewed him recently on the eve of his visit. Here is an excerpt:

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To read the full interview, click the following link:

http://www.iop.org/news/16/oct/page_68358.html

Congratulations to Vishal Srivastava who recently defended his PhD thesis.

Vishal performed his thesis experiment  using deuteron beam of energy 25 MeV from VECC K130 cyclotron on ²⁷Al target to extract spectroscopic information about different excited states of ²⁶Al and ²⁶Mg populated through the ²⁷Al(d , t) and ²⁷Al(d , ³He) reactions, respectively. The nucleus ²⁶Al is very important in recent astrophysics research, as it is the first cosmic radioactivity detected through its characteristic gamma rays in the interstellar medium and its lifetime (10⁶ year) is much shorter as compared to the time for galactic evolution (10¹⁰ year). The detection of ²⁶Al at the present time indicates that nucleosynthesis is currently active in the massive stars within our galaxy and it is known that massive stars are the main sources for the origin of ²⁶Al . Also the decay of ²⁶Al may be used as an isotopic chronometer for galaxies  and it is also used to probe the Standard Model. So, detailed knowledge of the structures of ²⁶Al and ²⁶Mg is necessary to understand the formation of ²⁶Al as well as its destruction  in our galaxy in order to understand its evolution.

Well done Dr. Srivastava, we wish you all the best.

Swagata Mallik successfully defended his PhD thesis. On 9^th February, 2016, he delivered an open seminar, in presence of his thesis examiners, at the N.K. Ganguly Lecture Hall.

His thesis deals with the theoretical studies of statistical and dynamical models of nuclear multi-fragmentation. His thesis is first of its kind in the topic of fragmentation of nuclei from VECC. His work has made valuable contributions to both statistical and dynamical multifragmentation theories which is quite remarkable.  The thesis is expected to provide important guidelines for the upcoming facilities of our centre namely the superconducting cyclotron and the ANURIB. The quality of this work can be judged from the compliments received from one of the thesis examiners who considers this thesis to be among the best on the subject during the last two decades. Another examiner strongly recommends the thesis to be published as a book for the heavy ion reaction practitioners. A large number of publications in peer reviewed journals bear witness to an unusually productive body of work for a Ph.D student. All the best to him for the future.

Calcutta edition of the leading Indian English daily “The Telegraph” featured three scientists of our group: Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya, Dr. Parnika Das and Dr. Sarmistha  Bhattacharyya.

Chandana is leading a group of scientists in the country for building hundreds of neutron detectors to be used for experiments at VECC as well as at the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Germany.  She is also the Head of the Experimental Nuclear Physics Division at VECC.  Parnika is building a device that can trap a single atom to measure it’s mass precisely. Sarmistha, a well-known experimentalist in the country is basically involved in research to understand the nature of fundamental force that binds nuclei.

Anasuya Basu, the reporter of The Telegraph unveils the interesting story of the grooming up of these FAIR ladies and their love for Physics.

Sarmistha, the leader of the Public Awareness Cell of VECC feels happy to see the newspaper report. “Although I prefer to consider myself only as a physicist, but I will be glad if this report inspires young girls to take science as a career”, said Sarmistha.    

The report of The Telegraph, published on 7th December 2017, can be found in this link:

https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/fair-ladies-call-nuclear-shots/cid/1395200

The scientists and technicians of the experimental nuclear physics division, under the leadership of Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya, shared the "Group Achievement Award 2014" for the successful development of large area gas detectors at VECC. The award, given annually by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), consists of a citation and medal, apart from cash prize.

After intensive R&D efforts, the group has developed several position sensitive Multi-Wire Proportional Counters (MWPC) that were designed and fabricated indigenously. These large area (typical area ~ 20 cm x 6 cm, 24 cm x 10 cm) gas detectors provide both timing and position information and are very cost effective. The detectors, which constitute one of the major in-house experimental facilities for VECC cyclotron, can be easily transported to other major accelerator facilities (BARC-TIFR-Mumbai, IUAC-New Delhi) in India and are routinely used for the experiments to study nuclear fission dynamics.  The detectors are now used not only by the VECC scientists, but also by the researchers from other laboratories and universities in the country as well.

The award will be presented in a ceremony to be held on 29th October, at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai.

Dr. Tapan Kumar Rana has been selected as the best Young Physicist in the Young Physicists Colloquium (YPC 2015) held in the last week (20-21 August, 2015) at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. He was awarded the S.N. Ghosal award with a handful of cash prize, apart from books and a certificate. Young Physicist Colloquium (YPC) is a well known yearly event, organized by the Indian Physical Society. 21 young physicists (of age less than 35 years) were selected from the country to present their research work. A board of judges selected the best three presentations.

In the colloquium Tapan presented his research work that deals with the famous Hoyle State saga.

The Hoyle state saga:

 The world around us has been fascinating our imagination since the early days of human civilisation: ‘What we are made up of, and what are the constituents of our mother earth?’  Now we know that the life on the earth would not have existed without the presence of the element Carbon, which is the fourth most abundant element on earth. In addition, we also have a long series of elements up to Uranium. How these elements were formed?

The story unfolds from the time zero, dating back to ~13.8 billion years from today,  when the universe started with an explosion called ‘Big Bang’ and produced mostly Hydrogen and Helium through a process called Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. However this phase lasted only for a few (~3 - 20) minutes. So, at the end, there is no Carbon, no heavy element, no life – a dull universe indeed!

The next stage of cooking started  much later (~ 500 million years) - when stellar bodies were formed  to carry forward the fusion chain to produce heavier elements – only to end up in a roadblock, as stable elements corresponding to mass numbers A = 5 and 8 do not exist !  As the way out, it was proposed that the synthesis of Carbon might have taken place through a successive 3alpha capture process: alpha + alpha => ⁸Be (t_1/2 ~ 10^-16 s); ⁸Be + alpha = ¹²C. To enhance the reaction rate and explain the abundance of Carbon on earth, Fred Hoyle postulated the existence of a resonant state of ¹²C just above the 3alpha decay threshold; this 0₂⁺ state at 7.654 MeV above the ground state is the famous Hoyle state.

Though postulated initially to solve an astrophysical puzzle, Hoyle state soon turned out to be a puzzle in itself– so much so that even six decades into its discovery, it  still evokes a lot of interest; and the problems are manifold – indicating large gaps in our present day understanding of nuclear physics. To mention in brief:

 -it is also known to have larger radius compared to that in the ground state, giving rise to wild speculations about its exotic shapes like linear 3a chain, bent-arm or compact triangular configurations. At the same time, it is also considered as a dilute Bose gas which may end up in a nuclear 3a Bose-Einstein Condensate!!

- it is not reproducible by standard shell-model calculation – a classic example of alpha-cluster nuclear states in light nuclei, which led to the development of the most advanced ab-initio and no-core shell model methods to tackle the problem.

Thus it is worth taking up the challenge to unravel the mysteries of Hoyle state! Tapan along with his group members at this centre have been involved in this exciting game to determine quantitative contributions and extract ‘signatures’ of the exotic structure of the Hoyle state and other Hoyle-like bands in light nuclei using light particle beams from the cyclotron.

Well done Tapan, congratulations !!

Balaram Dey successfully defended his PhD thesis on last Tuesday, 11^th August, 2015 at the N.K. Ganguly lecture hall. He is the first student of the VECC pre-doc batch 2010 to complete his thesis work.

In his thesis work, Balaram studied the temperature dependence of giant dipole resonance (GDR) width at excited states of atomic nuclei in the mass ~100 region at low temperature.

Giant resonance is a collective mode of excitation of nuclei and originates because of the out of phase collective oscillations of neutron and protons in nuclei. The resonance is called “giant” because the wide maximum in the reaction cross section associated with the resonance indicates that essentially all nucleons participate in the process. Study of GDR are of particular interest as they provide the most reliable information about the bulk behavior (e.g; viscosity) of the nuclear many-body system. Although, GDR had been studied for a long time, the temperature dependence of this resonance is still not understood completely due to lack of experimental data, particularly at the low temperature.

[Photograph taken during our group picnic in winter, Balaram (seen with wearing full sleeves sweater) has a great admiration for all kinds of sports activities in the campus, particularly in cricket !]

Balaram, along with his group members under the supervision of Sudhee Ranjan Banerjee, carried out extensive experimental study to provide new data of the GDR width at low temperature for the nuclei ⁹⁷Tc. Indeed, he presented the first data points at low temperature in this mass region and compared the data with different theoretical models and showed that the experimental findings are consistent with the critical temperature fluctuation model that was recently proposed by researchers at VECC. He found that the measured data are consistent with the phonon damping model too but differs significantly from the commonly accepted thermal shape fluctuation model. These interesting results indicated that the effect of GDR induced deformation could be one of the ways in explaining macroscopically the behavior of GDR width at low temperature.

Congratulations Dr. Balram Dey, wish you all the best for a fascinating career ahead! 

For life in the universe to be possible you need sufficient amount of carbon. You can’t think about life without oxygen. These heavier elements (carbon/oxygen) were produced in stellar nucleosynthesis process in the fusion of (3/4) ⁴He nuclei. The production of carbon would not occur with sufficient amount (abundance) unless the probability of the formation of ¹²C was boosted by the presence of its excited nuclear state at about 7.65 MeV. This excited state is known as the Hoyle state that was predicted by Fred Hoyle. Today, Tapan Kumar Rana successfully defended his PhD thesis that studied the structure and decay mechanism of the Hoyle state.

(Photo adopted from Samir Kundu’s facebook post: Tapan Kumar Rana delivering his thesis seminar at the N.K. Ganguly lecture hall,VECC.)   

During his thesis work, Tapan with the other members of his group, extensively worked under the supervision of Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya, to build a charged particle detector array (CPDA) that consists of 24 telescopes, made of silicon strip and cesium iodide crystals. He used few of these telescopes to detect the alpha particles from the decay of the Hoyle state that was produced by bombarding alpha particles (from our K130 cyclotron) on ¹²C target.

The high statistics measurements of Tapan, revealed that the decay of the Hoyle state proceeds exclusively as a sequential two-step process via the ground state of ⁸Be. From detail simulation work he estimated that only less than 1% of the events proceed through the direct 3 alpha decay. This finding will have significant impact on nucleosynthesis reaction rate calculation.

Congratulations Dr. Rana!

If you are working in the lab late in the evening or in the week ends, you my have noticed the jackals moving around our VECC campus. Dinesh Kumar Srivastava closely observed their compelling change in lifestyle and narrates an interesting sad tale of such wild animals trapped in Kolkata.

The (following) article was published in English daily "The Statesman" on 25th January, 2015.
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ARJUNA, while pleading for avoidance of war in the Gita, worried about the birth of varna-sankars or persons of mixed races or mixed “colours” or mixed castes, following wars. Jean M Auel wrote several delightful books under the series Earth’s Children, exploring the encounter of early modern men and Neanderthals. Rudyard Kipling went on to develop a character in a short story to almost a cult status when he introduced Mowgli, a boy brought up by a wolf in his masterpiece, The Jungle Book. And who can forget the story of Buck, the St. Bernard-Scotch Collie of Call of the Wild, going on to father a breed of wolves with an interesting streak in their fur and its sequel, White Fang, the story of the domestication of one of them, narrated by the great story teller, Jack London.
   But I am going to narrate a simple and sad tale of our wild animals trapped in a metropolis. The passage of time changes the meaning of words. Metropolis originally meant “the mother city”, which sent out settlers; but now it simply stands for a large and busy city. And we shall use it in that sense.
   And we shall talk of Calcutta or Kolkata, as one is supposed to call it. While this land mass must have existed for ever, its more modern history started with the landing of Job Charnock at one of the ghats at Sutanati, fortified with permission from the Emperor Aurangzeb, on 24 August 1690, according to his note in his Chuttanutty Diary. I do not have the courage to go against the courts, which have decided a markedly more ancient history of the city!
   Our institute started much later in a distant suburb of Calcutta in the late 1960s. The area was known as Salt Lake. Earlier, it was simply known as “The Maath” or “The Field”. Bimal Mitra would have us believe that Lord Clive and “Begum Mary Biswas” saw it from the roof of his kothi at Dumdum. Amitav Ghosh tells us of pilot whales getting blown into that area during the great cyclone of 1737.  The term cyclone itself was to be coined much later by Henry Piddington in 1848, though.
   Later, in 1741, the Bargis (Marathas) invaded Calcutta, perhaps from the direction of the same “Maath”. Fifteen years later, Nawab Sirajuddaulla invaded Calcutta in June 1756 and renamed it Alinagar and British historians damned him forever by stamping the term “black-hole” against his name. His army had stayed in “The Maath”, and our own Nirad Chouaduri visited it while writing about it in Clive of India: A Political and Psychological Essay.
   The jackals of Salt Lake had seen it all and survived it all, even thriving with famines, murders, riots and outgrown vegetation. The oldest picture of our institute shows a vast field covered with “kaans” grass, bushes of ber (Indian plum or Ziziphus Mauritiana), and trees of wild palms, figs and jungle jalebi (Pithecellobium Dulche). There were several small ponds with fish in them, mongoose, snakes and a huge swarm of mosquitoes. A large variety of birds —  parrots, bulbuls, weaver-birds, golden orioles, sunbirds, sparrows, mynahs, jungle babblers, etc — lived there throughout the year. The neighbouring Kestopur Canal used to be covered by migratory birds during the winter. And we reached the site by crossing it with a ferry from VIP Road.
   One of the first structures to come up there was a high brick boundary wall covering about half of the area and a chain link fence for the remaining part. And there was just one gate, continuously manned. This sealed the fate of the jackals that were trapped forever within the boundary walls. What follows is just a story of their struggle for adoption over decades of living within these walls, with their shrinking habitat, with their changing food habits and even becoming almost diurnal from nocturnal in their lifestyles. The birds flew in and out and ultimately moved away as bushes and shrubs were cleared, and the snakes slithered away, but the jackals could not leave.
   And now they were two classes of jackals, one that was stuck inside the boundary walls and the other that still roamed the Salt Lake area and beyond and lived along the Kestopur Canal. As evening approached, they started their calls and counter-calls, which went somewhat like “hua, hua, hua, hukki, hua, hua”, which have filled the Indian forests and countryside for millennia. A call would start from where we now have the Central Park, it would be picked up by the jackals living around the green belt along the Kestopur Canal and then it would be followed by the jackals inside the institute. Recall that in eastern Uttar Pradesh jackals are called paharua, as they give out their calls every “prahar” (about three hours) during the night.
   As the night descended, they would come out from their holes and play in the sand brought in for construction. There were enough wild birds and small animals for them to survive and they did. The institute expanded, more buildings were needed and more people joined. Stray dogs moved in and have stayed since then. The dogs would bark through the night at the sight of them and chase them, losing them in the growth still covering the unbuilt areas. A cafeteria came up and produced enough trash for them and they survived.
   Slowly they started becoming a little more adventurous and came out even before it was too dark, at least during the weekends when there were not many people around. They maintained their distance from the dogs and people, because the dogs would chase them on sight. We had planted some fast growing trees like Casuarina and Eucalyptus. The ber bushes also prospered and gave patches of thick foliage for them to live and hunt.
   When a patch had to be cleared, they started living close to the garage where our drivers stayed during the night shifts and who often found them moving near their retiring rooms. The drivers would throw some food their way and slowly they were less scared of them. The dogs still chased them and barked at them from a distance.
   Perhaps it started it with the pups, but no one is sure. The pups would, during the nights, approach the guards at the gate and happily “smiling”, approach even the dogs and play with them. After some initial hostility, the dogs, too, started playing with the pups and slowly stopped chasing the jackals when they came out during the nights. The jackals were still nocturnal.
   As the Salt Lake area got more populated, the jackals outside the fenced-in area started moving away. We also moved into the campus of our institute by then and on the nights when I was up reading or working, I would see them come out from the foliage, chase a rat or a mole, look into the trash-cans and play in the sand, sometimes digging up the ground to the annoyance of the gardener. Our gates were always manned and the jackals looked in that direction with soulful eyes, never daring to approach a gate with the watchmen with their sticks and a number of stray dogs that gave them company during the long nights. It was then that we noticed that the calls of the jackals during the night were becoming less and less frequent, coming hardly once a week — even though still answered by the jackals that were fenced in.  It was not difficult for us to realise that not only were the calls fewer and far between, even the number of jackals participating in the “chorus” was perceptibly decreasing. We have not heard these calls for a long time now. And strangely enough, the jackals trapped inside also do not give a call anymore.
   Some years ago I started noticing, especially when I went to the institute on weekends or when I worked till very late, that the jackals that were still left, appeared even before sunset and they were given a “friendly chase” by the dogs; the jackals not running fast enough and the dogs not making any serious attempt to catch up and attack them, and definitely not barking.
   And now, since early last year, we have started noticing some “dog-jackals” that emerge from the very little foliage that is still left in the institute, a little before the sunsets. They are still rather shy and keep a safe distance from people but do not hide from them and, sometimes, they are seen moving with the dogs. Their fur is not as rich and shiny as those of jackals, which is normally black on the back, golden on the sides and white in the belly region. Their tails do not have longer fur and they often hold it horizontally and straight.
   Now they are trapped forever in this metropolis. The chase in the wild, the call every three hours, the hunting in pairs, the eating frenzy after the kill of a wild animal or on finding a carcass are all forgotten as they learn to survive anew. Will their progeny, after a few more generations, retain any of the traits of their ancestors who must have dominated the landscape of Calcutta at one time as names like Baghmari (“tiger-killed”) and Sealdah (“pond of the jackal”) are to be believed?
   Yes, Arjuna, you were right, this war between urbanisation and the wilderness has given rise to a varna-sankar of dogs and jackals that are neither dogs nor jackals and which neither bark nor give a call — and yet they do not fully trust either men or dogs.

Santu Manna received the 2^nd best poster award at the DAE Symposium on Nuclear Physics held at Banaras Hindu University during 08-12 December, 2014. In the poster, Santu presented the results of an experiment that studied fragment emission mechanism in reactions ¹²C + ¹²C (producing an alpha cluster like nucleus) and ¹³C + ¹²C (non-alpha cluster nucleus). Santu and his collaborators, found that the yield of the neutron rich nuclei ⁹Be is (~ 4 times) more in reactions ¹³C + ¹²C compared to ¹²C + ¹²C.  Study of fragments emission mechanism is considered to be an important tool to understand entrance channel effects in reactions involving alpha-cluster and non alpha-cluster like nuclei.

A poster on "Decay spectroscopy of neutron rich Iodine isotopes", presented by Soumik Bhattacharya of Physics Group, at the “Euro-School on Exotic Beams” held at Padova, Italy, during September 7-13, 2014, has been selected as the 2nd best poster among 56 posters, represented by students from various international laboratories and universities of the world.

“Euro-School on Exotic Beams” is a well known international annual event, supported by several large research facilities and funding agencies in Europe. The school is intended for PhD students and young post-docs working in areas related to radioactive-ion beams and consist of several lecture courses given by experts in the field.

Photograph taken from Soumik’s facebook profile: During a month’s long tour to Europe, apart from attending the Euro-school, he attended TALENT School held at GANIL. In the week end, Soumik didn’t miss to visit Louvre museum and Eiffel tower in Paris with his friends.

The poster, represented by Soumik, is based on the recent experiments carried out at our K130 cyclotron facility using the offline decay spectroscopy of radio-chemically separated fission fragments, produced from fission of ²³⁸U target, induced by 32 MeV alpha beams. Fission, being known as one of the best route to produce neutron-rich nuclei in medium mass region, was utilized to produce neutron-rich Iodine isotopes along various other fission products. After radiochemical separation from all other fission products, the clean Iodine samples were counted with a coincidence setup of four Clover HPGe detectors and two segmented Low Energy Photon Spectrometer (LEPS). Various neutron-rich Xenon isotopes, produced from the decay of corresponding Iodine isotopes, were identified and decay gamma rays were measured in coincidence.   

Dr. Deepak Pandit has been selected as the 2^nd best speaker in the Young Physicists Colloquium (YPC 2014) held at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics during 21-22 August, 2014. He was awarded with a handful of cash prize, apart from books and a certificate.

Young Physicist Colloquium (YPC) is a well known yearly event, organized by the Indian Physical Society. 23 young physicists (of age less than 35 years) were selected from the country to present their research work. A board of judges selected the best three presentations.

Deepak’s research work deals with the probing of different nuclear shapes via the decay of Giant Dipole Resonances (GDR) in hot rotating nuclei. Giant dipole resonance (GDR) occurs in nuclei because of the out of phase oscillations of protons and neutrons. This is an excellent probe to study the deformation of  nuclei. Deepak and his group members have developed an efficient detector array (Large Area Modular Barium Fluoride Array, they call it LAMBDA array) to detect these GDR gamma rays.  From the experiments carried out with beams from K-130 cyclotron at VECC, he has shown that Jacobi shape transition, which occurs in gravitating rotating stars, also takes place in atomic nucleus using GDR as a probe.

Well done Dr. Deepak Pandit, congratulations!

After several months of preparation, editing and revision, VECC physics group has launched a new comprehensive online info resource. The new website has been developed following Government of India guide lines.

The website complies with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 level AA. This will enable people with visual impairments access the website using assistive technologies, such as screen readers. The site can also be viewed with an option to change background and text size for comfortable reading. The website features detailed activities of the group, with clickable sections segmenting it into four categories: Theoretical Physics, Experimental Nuclear Physics, Material Science and Nuclear Electronics.

Within each section, user can explore further the details about the key research activities in our group and research facilities. Every piece is highlighted with a short description, one or more photos. Details clickable info about the scientists and technical persons (some with photographs) are found in the “people” link while info about our post-docs and students are found in the “HRD” (acronym of Human Resource Development) tool bar of the landing page.

The site can be viewed by clicking on http://pgweb.vecc.gov/

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please send your feedback.

Dr. Deepak Pandit and Dr. Gopal Mukherjee have made us proud. Deepak has been selected for the prestigious "Young Scientist Award" and Gopal bagged the “Scientific & Technical Excellence Award” for the year 2013 in recognition of their outstanding contributions in their work. The award, given annually by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), consists of a citation and medal, apart from cash prize.

A 15 member group of scientists and technicians, under the leadership of Dr. Saila Bhattacharya, received the "Group achievement Award 2013" for the successful development of Charged Particle Detector Array at VECC.  

The awards were given in a ceremony held in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai on 30th October, the Founders Day at BARC

Hearty congratulations to Dr. Pandit, Dr. Mukherjee and Dr. Bhattacharya and his team, on their achievements!

Haridas Pai defended his PhD thesis today morning. This was the final thesis defense seminar by a student pursuing PhD at VECC of the Pre-doc batch 2007-08.

On last Wednesday, Sabyasachi Ghosh defended his PhD thesis successfully.
                                    

                                                                            Dr. Sabyasachi Ghosh and Dr. Haridas Pai

Santosh Kumar Das delivered his thesis seminar on 28th September. Victor Roy and Payal Mohanty, the other two students of the same batch successfully defended their thesis on 27th November.

Congratulations to Dr. Santosh Kumar Das, Dr. Victor Roy, Dr. Payal Mohanty, Dr. Sabyasachi Ghosh and Dr. Haridas Pai. Physics Group wishes all the best for your career ahead.
 

A group of 55 students of class XI from Indira Gandhi Memorial High school, accompanied by their two teachers, visited our centre on 13th November. Dr. Sarmistha Bhattacharya gave a warm welcome to them and the visitors were shown a video slide on our centre’s activities at the seminar hall of the Raja Ramanna Lecture Wings. Later on, three scientists of our centre took them in three separate groups to visit the experimental area of the K130 Cyclotron and K500 Superconducting Cyclotron. While the scientists explained them basic principles of cyclotron and related experimental set up along with different kind of detectors, the students interacted with immense interest. They expressed that the visit to VECC was very exciting and fruitful to them to feel motivated for having research career in future.

Sourav Sarkar, Paramita Mukherjee and Chandana Bhattacharya have made us proud. They have been selected for the prestigious “Scientific & Technical Excellence Award” for the year 2011 in recognition of their outstanding contributions in their work. The award, given annually by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), consists of a Citation and Medal, apart from a cash prize of INR 1,00,000.

Dr. Sourav Sarkar, a theoretician in our group, has made significant contribution to studies concerning the behaviour of hadrons when subjected to hot and dense environment.  Dr. Paramita Mukherjee is conferred with the award for her contributions in the field of radiation damage studies of nuclear structural materials. Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya is a well known experimental nuclear physicist in the country. She is leading the charged particle detector array development at VECC and contributed immensely in the nuclear reaction studies using the major accelerator facilities in India.

Chandana, Paramita and Sourav are going to receive the award in a ceremony to be held in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai on 30th October, the Founder’s Day of BARC.

Hearty congratulations to Chandana, Paramita and Sourav, on their achievements!

More than 150 scientists from India and Europe assembled at our campus for the annual NUSTAR week 2012 meeting in the last week. NUSTAR is a collaboration of scientists from all over the world, devoted to the study of NUclear STructure, Astrophysics, and Reactions at the upcoming FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) facility at GSI, Darmstadt in Germany.

The meeting at VECC held is the 4th in the series. The previous NUSTAR week meetings were held at Dubna (2009), Lund (2010) and Bucharest (2011). The aim of the NUSTAR Week meeting was to exchange views about the collaboration in general, hold working group meetings of all NUSTAR projects, presentation of new technical results and discuss perspective ideas together. This year, one full day of the meeting was devoted for the discussion on Indian participation in NUSTAR activities, the day was declared as “NUSTAR-India Day” of the meeting.

The meeting started on 8th October afternoon at the Ajay Divatia Lecture Hall with an informal welcome address by our Director, Prof. D. K. Srivastava. Technical discussions, collaboration meetings for different experimental campaign and meetings for the common working group on silicon detectors were held on 8th October evening and 9th October. In the evening on 9th October, participants enjoyed a fascinating Indian classical dance performance “Amritasya Putra” by Mamata Shankar Dance Troupe from Kolkata.

The meeting was officially inaugurated for all on Wednesday, 10th October. Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, the Director of VECC, welcome the participants. Thomas Nilsson, the Chairman of the NUSTAR Board of Representative argued that India being a strong share holder in FAIR should support NUSTAR activities by taking part in a big way in areas of common interest. V.S. Ramamurthy assured the Indian scientists that funding will not be a problem since the 12th Five Year Plan has just started in India and mentioned that it is the right to come up with concrete experimental proposal for NUSTAR. Bikash Sinha advocated for the Indian participation in FAIR in a big way. He encouraged the "Nu stars" (new stars) in Indian science, to participate in experiments and facility development,  that are guided by the extensions of the similar ongoing programmes where Indian researchers are engaged over the decades both inside and abroad. Inti Lehmann presented an overview of the FAIR facility.

In the “NUSTAR-India Day” of the meeting, on 11th October, Prof. Sibaji Raha, Director of Bose Institute and Vice-chair to the FAIR council mentioned that India is the third largest share holder in FAIR GmbH with 3.5 % share (36 million euro). Dr. Rakesh Kumar Bhandari talked about India’s participation in the design and development of magnets for FAIR. Prof. Raj Pillay presented a summary of the participation of Indian low energy experimental community in NUSTAR experiments. More than 20 Indian scientists presented their research work that has overlap with NUSTAR activities.

In the final day of the program on 12th October, six plenary physics talks were delivered. Dr. Saila Bhattacharya presented an overview of the experimental research activities that are pursued at VECC. In his closing remarks, Thomas Nilsson mentioned that the meeting will be useful in a great way in shaping the NUSTAR project. The next NUSTAR week meeting will be held in GSI, Germany in February, 2013.

If you want to know “How much a heavy quark is dragged by Quark Gluon Plasma”, go and ask our graduate student Santosh. That’s all about his PhD thesis is ! 

Just after submitting his PhD thesis in April, 2012, Santosh Kumar Das went to Seoul, Korea to work as visiting scientist in Yonsei University. Last week he came back to VECC to defend his PhD thesis. He delivered an open seminar on last Friday at the Raja Ramanna Research Scholar’s Wings Seminar Hall where his thesis examiners were present.

In the PhD thesis entitled “Heavy flavor production and propagation in heavy ion collision”, Santosh has evaluated the darg force of Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), the primordial fluid that filled up the micro-second old universe. He has estimated the drag force of QGP formed at collisions of Gold (Au) nuclei at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at USA by contrasting his theoretical results with experimental data.

Santosh has published the results of his research work (3 papers) in Physical Review C and (4 papers) in Physical Review D journals. Among these 7 papers, 2 papers were published as Rapid Communications.

Santosh will spend with us at VECC until next week. He is going back to his home in Orissa before he flies to Catania in Italy to join a post doc position for four years in the Catania University.

Well done Dr. Santosh Kumar Das!  The Physics Group wishes all the best to you for a fascinating carrier ahead.

Dr. Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, the Director of our Centre, today inaugurated the upgraded Silicon Detector Laboratory with a new clean room facility and a new Neutron Detector Fabrication Laboratory. 

The new clean room facility at the Silicon Detector Laboratory will be used by the experimenters for the storage and performance testing of the very thin, segmented silicon detectors to be used in the Charged Particle Detector Array (CPDA). The CPDA is one of the major facilities that VECC is building for the effective utilization of the Super Conducting Cyclotron at our campus. “The clean room that we have built is of class 1 00 000. If you go outside this room, you may find 10 times more airborne particles in a cubic foot of air of size greater than 0.5 microns,” interpreted Dr. Saila Bhattacharya, Head of the Physics Group. The CPDA consists of 24 “telescopes”, each of which consists two thin (50 micron & 500 micron / 1mm) strip detectors and 4 CsI crystals. For mounting the detectors in a telescope, the experimenters require clean environment.

The Neutron Detector Fabrication Laboratory, located at the roof top of the Silicon Detector Laboratory, will be used for the assembly, fabrication and testing of liquid based scintillator detectors. These detectors will form a neutron time of flight (TOF) array, to be installed in the beam-line of the super conducting cyclotron beam hall. The lab will also be used for the fabrication and testing of detectors that VECC will contribute to the international FAIR project at GSI, Germany. VECC, along with other Indian collaborators, will develope 50 neutron detectors for MONSTER (MOdular Neutron SpectromeTER) array for the DESPEC experiment at FAIR.

26 final year B.Sc. Physics students, accompanied by their 4 teachers from Krishnanagar Government College visited our centre on last Friday (24th August).The students were greeted by Dr. Sarmistha Bhattacharya, member of the VECC Public Awareness Cell, at the main gate and took them to the seminar hall of the Raja Ramanna Lecture Wings where the visitors were shown a video slide on our centre’s activities. Three scientists of our centre gave the students tours to the different facilities of our centre and explained the research activities that we pursue here. The students visited the experimental area of the K130 Cyclotorn, where they get to know about different kind of detectors that we use for our research. The students also got the opportunity to interact with Manas Datta, the on-shift cyclotron operator who explained visitors the basic principle of cyclotron. The students and their teachers also visited the K500 Superconducting Cyclotron control room and the PMD laboratory. A lunch was organized for the students by our Director.

Dr. Ramnaryan Deb, Head of the Physics department of the Krishnanagar Government College informed us that their college has been recognized as “College with Potential for Excellence“ by NAAC and awarded the accreditation level “A”. As a part of the academic tour, they choose VECC for their student’s visit. The students conveyed us that they were excited to visit all our facilities, the video show and now got more motivated to pursue such kind of research in future.

Congratulations to Jhilam Sadhukhan who successfully defended his PhD thesis today. His thesis deals with the statistical and dynamical model of nuclear fission. Jhilam, with his thesis supervisor Dr Santanu Pal, has developed a generalized Kramers’ formula that can be incorporated in statistical model calculation to extract more realistic values of nuclear dissipation. Nuclear dissipation, which slows down the nuclear fission process, is analogous to friction that we experience in our daily life.

 Even before he finished his thesis, he received couple of offers of post doc positions from a national lab and a reputed university in the United States. He has accepted the offer of University of Tennessee and is set to fly on 17th July to join the post doc position.

Well done Dr. Sadhukhan, our best wishes is with you!

He came from a village where people used to go for hunting even in the derelict graveyards. Probably, that made him bold minded. He loves driving a car through hills. The most interesting project that he has handled in his 44 years long career is the development of a Superconducting Cyclotron at Kolkata. Mishreyee Bhattacharya & Tilak Ghosh unveil the fascinating journey through life and unfulfilled dreams of Rakesh Kumar Bhandari, the Director of VECC, who laid down his office in the last weekend.

He knew only the basic principle of a cyclotron that he read in his college at Meerut. Even then, when Dr. P. K. Iyengar, the Head of the Physics Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in the year 1968, asked a 20 years old young fellow, where he wanted to join after successful completion of BARC training school; the answer was: “Calcutta, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Project”. 40 years later, he found that he is called as the “Father of Cyclotron in India”. 

“If you want to call someone in India as ‘Father of Cyclotron in India’, he should be my thesis supervisor, Dr. Ajay Divatia, not me”, said Dr. Rakesh Kumar Bhandari with all his modesty. “I worked from the beginning of the development of the K130 machine at this campus, but I took leadership role on the development of the heavy ion ECR ions source with my colleagues D.K. Bose and G.S.Taki. Of course, I worked as the leader of the Superconducting Cyclotron project since its inception.”

Rakesh Kumar Bhandari hails from a village in Punjab. “As you know, an Indian student from a lower middle class family of a village usually does not plan about his career when he is in school. One of the turning points of my carrier was that I bagged National Science Talent Scholarship in 1964,” remembers his young days. “My plan was to join IIT-Kanpur for the master’s degree, and then probably, as it was a fashion in those days, travel to Unites States for a PhD. But it didn’t happen to me as I couldn’t crack their entrance test. You can consider that as another turning point of my carrier”, fondly remembers Dr. Bhandari who was the topper in B.Sc. in his batch from Meerut College.

In the early 80’s Dr. Bhandari was invited as a guest scientist to design heavy ion injection system for a large cyclotron at the Nuclear Research Centre (KFA) at Juelich, Germany. “After, I came back to India, there was an initiative to develop a separated sector cyclotron that would be coupled with K130 machine. However, the success of the Michigan (NSCL, Michigan State University) K500 Superconducting Cyclotron machine boosted us to consider a similar development in India. So the idea of the development of a separated sector cyclotron didn’t turn up.”

In 1990, Rakesh Bhandari went to join the Superconducting Supercollider Project in Dallas in the Unites States. It was one of the largest funding science projects at that time. When he came back finally in 1993, the centre was really at the verge of taking up the Superconducting Cyclotron (SCC) project. “Although, we discussed about the project since the end of 80’s, the project actually started in 1998, when we started exploring industry. The machine that we have built is similar to Texas machine, but 70 % of the development was our indigenous effort,” feels Dr. Bhandari. He reminded the intricacy of the machine with lots of technology involved. He shared with us the difficult periods of the project, when they had to explore industry who would work with them. Getting superconducting cables were not easy. They had to struggle to get liquefier. They really had tough times to make cryostat working; there were lots of issues like criticality of welding, coil winding etc. “We had to go all over the country to find companies, in that process we lost over 4 years. There was also directive from the department to develop things indigenously. Even, we sensed of the denial of cryogenics technology by the developed countries.” added Dr Bhandari. “Now, we feel that we took the project well ahead of time, the Indian industry was not really mature enough to help us in this development”.

With all these difficulties, the SCC machine succeeded to deliver internal beam in August 2009. “I would have been happier if the beam could be extracted out of the machine before I lay down my office. This remains one of my unfulfilled dreams, though I am sure that the beam will soon be extracted”, told Dr. Bhandari.
He believes that, in the coming years the centre will continue to flourish as a nuclear physics research institute. “I think that the centre should be treated as a pioneer research institute in the country rather than just an accelerator centre. The researchers will get the opportunity to engage themselves in the front line research activities with the available beam from cyclotrons. Surely, a young researcher can consider joining VECC for the best career development in the country.” He feels that the mega science project of Advanced National facility for Unstable & Rare Isotope Beams (ANURIB) will be the future of VECC in long run. “The centre should of course continue to take part in international collaborations, but only in those that fit in our own program and which benefits our centre.”

He also mentioned about the need to reach to the society. “It’s all the money of the tax payers that we get for our science funding. With all our expertise in accelerator development, we should take effort for the indegenous development of low cost cyclotrons that can be utilized to treat cancer patients.” One of the projects that is close to Dr. Bhandari’s heart is DAE Medical Cyclotron Project that will be used to produce isotopes for diagnosis cancer patients. “The machine has already been procured from IBA, Belgium. However, the project couldn’t be completed in time as there is huge delay in the construction of the building. This remains another unfulfilled dream”, told Bhandari.

“I have spent more than four decades of my life in the DAE family. When I look back, I find it’s a satisfying journey through the roads of life. I am really thankful to my all colleagues”.

The centre bids farewell to Dr. Bhandari on Friday, 29th June afternoon. In the felicitation program, scientists and accelerator physicists from all over the country assembled at the SINP auditorium to convey their appreciation to him. Dr. Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, the newly appointed Director of VECC, mentioned Dr. Bhandari as a pioneer to make VECC a leading accelerator centre in the country.  Dr. Bikash Sinha considers Dr. Bhandari as the number one accelerator physicist in the country. “His bonhomie and sensitivity are much to be admired”, added Dr. Sinha.

“Sir, tussi great ho”, said Tamal Bhattacharyya, one of his younger colleagues !

17 pages and two articles of the current issue of Physical Review C represent the results of his thesis work. He is a co-author of another two papers that have been published in June issue of Physical Review C. Haridas Pai, a PhD student at our centre working in the area of experimental nuclear physics, is all set to submit his thesis today.

On 16th June, the foundation day of our centre, all the members of VECC family gave a big hand when Dr D.K. Srivastava, the Head of the Physics Group, broke the news that June volume of Physical Review C may have 7 articles (3 theory and 4 experimental papers) published by researchers from VECC. Two of the four experimental papers that have been published in this month, are the results of the thesis work of Haridas Pai (fondly known to his friend as “h-pi”), a PhD student working at the Physics Group. The other two experimental papers form the part of the thesis work of Kaushik Banerjee and Samir Kundu, staff scientists at the Charged Particle Detector Array (CPDA) lab, who are working on the final version of the write up of their thesis.

Haridas Pai with Peter Schuck, the eminent scientist and author of the famous book "The Nuclear Many-Body Problem"

“It’s an exciting day for me”, said Hari,  in a small gathering at the Charged Particle Detector Array (CPDA) laboratory where he invited his collaborators and well wishers today for a party to celebrate the day. “I have always enjoyed my research at VECC. When I compare our lab, with the other major laboratories in the country for nuclear physics research, surely VECC is one of the best. We have an in-house cyclotron and our laboratories are well equipped with the state of the detectors”, says Hari. His thesis work consists of the results of three experiments carried out at VECC, TIFR (Mumbai) and IUAC (New Delhi), the three major accelerator facilities in the country.  Recently, he was invited to deliver seminars at the six major laboratories in Europe. “I visited GSI, University of Cologne in Germany, GANIL and IPN-Orsay in France, University of Leuven in Belgium and University of Valencia in Spain in 25 days long tour, thanks to the students travel support fund provided by VECC. The travelling to different parts of the world is really one of the more exciting rewards for those who take research as a career. I am fortunate that, unlike many of my friends, after finishing M.Sc. I didn’t take a job and opted to join in research at VECC,” says Hari.

“Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” was his facebook status update when he arrived in Spain (where the movie was filmed) in May. Now, we understand why!

The most exciting thing to him at VECC is the student seminars. He would love to be a school teacher if he was not a scientist. He was fond of literature in his early days. He dislikes to attend a formal farewell party. Today is his last day at VECC officially............ Dr. Santanu Pal shares his thought with Tilak Ghosh and Mishreyee Bhattacharya.
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“If someone is ambitious and want to do science in a complete fashion, from the design of a new instrument to build it, and use it in an experiment, one should certainly consider joining VECC. The Centre has a very supportive environment in recent years for doing basic research, funding is not a constraint at all. One can easily find an engineer to discuss about his design or a scientist next door to her/his office to discuss innovative ideas” said Dr Santanu Pal, in an informal chat when we asked the question , if he thinks that young researcher should choose VECC to pursue their science career. Dr. Pal, Head of the Theoretical Physics Division of our centre, is officially retiring from VECC on 31st May.

Dr. Santanu Pal had a knack, from the childhood, of knowing how things work. “Once I made a dynamo. To test it, I plugged it into the switch board and then you know what happened…..the main fuse of electrical connections got tripped off. I had to lie to my mother to explain the reason behind the blackout” recalls Santanu-da, the fun story of his childhood. While explaining to us why he became a theoretician rather than an experimentalist Santanu da said, “It seemed to me that the theoretical laws are more fundamental, it is always exciting to understand how things work.” He also mentioned the impact of his university Professor Tapen Roy, who taught him quantum mechanics, to become theoretical physicist. Tapen Roy, who was a student of S.N. Bose and Paul Dirac, also encouraged Santanu-da to join Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

It was mid seventies. Bohr and Mottelson got the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei. Low energy nuclear physics was really booming while particle physics was really on the cross roads. So it was an obvious choice for a young researcher like Santanu Pal to pursue nuclear theory to start his career. “I had also an option to join Laser Physics Division at BARC in Mumbai. Getting accommodation in the departmental housing at BARC was really tough in those days. Many of my friends used to live in several guest houses near the BARC campus. VECC K130 Cyclotron was coming up at Kolkata. So, I preferred to come back to Kolkata, close to my home.”

“What role does nuclear theory play at VECC? Do you think that the theoretician and experimenters interact well enough at VECC?”, we asked to Santanu-da.

“The theoretician who works in the field of High Energy Physics may have certain overlap with the experiments carried out by their experimentalists colleagues, however in the low energy side, the interaction are not really enough” admits Santanu-da. "The main reason behind this is that, at the early stage of the operation of K130 cyclotron, many experiments were irradiation type of experiments, or the experimentalists didn’t require strong support from the theory group. However, recent experiments to study nuclear structure or giant dipole resonance with the help of large detector array at VECC give the opportunity to the experimenters to work with their theoretician colleagues more closely. When the Superconducting Cyclotron at our campus will be operational, surely experimenters will collaborate with theoreticians in a more fruitful way”, believes Santanu Pal.

The most memorable day to his tenure in VECC was the visit of Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam, whom he met once again during his visit to ICTP, Trieste, after four years.

“There is no worst memory at VECC, I am fortunate! However, many times I was disappointed when I found that people misinterpreted rules which were actually meant to do good” lamented Santanu-da.

“Do you find any change in the environment since you came to the Centre?” we wanted to know from him.

“Surely, there is a change for the betterment in general. In the early days, emphasis was on the developmental side as the centre was busy in building a new machine. Carrying out research in those days was treated as a hobby, writing paper was not considered to be a great job! The scene changed a lot since mid eighties. Collaboration culture of doing science at international level gave the centre a global view. Mindset of people was opened up and research atmosphere was widened much more. Now, while preparing the list of publications for the performance relative intensive scheme (PRIS), you will find that number of publications of VECC is really comparable or better than any premier basic research institute in our country”.

“Do you have any suggestions for young scientists?” was our final question to him.

“Follow your own intuition…..”

All are cordially invited to attend deliberations on

“Directions in Nuclear Physics” 
Date: 5th June, 2012
Venue: 2nd floor seminar Room (P202)
Details of the program :

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2:30 - 2:40       R. K. Bhandari           Opening address 
2:40 - 3:00       D. K. Srivastava        Keynote adress
3:00 - 3:20       Bikash Sinha             The enigma of the perfect fluid
3:20 - 3:40       Tea
3:40 - 4:00        A. K. Choudhury       Triangular flow
4:00 - 4:20        J. Alam                      Charm and beauty in Quark Gluon Plasma
4:20 - 4:40        S. Sarkar                   Strong interaction of hadrons in the medium
4:40 - 5:00        D. N. Basu                 Rapidly rotating axisymmetric netron stars with quark core
5:00 - 5:20        J Sadhukhan             The statistical and dynamical models of Nuclear Fission
5:20 - 5:40        Swagato Mallik          Model for projectile fragmentation
5:40 - 6:00        S. Pal                         Concluding remarks

“Sex is biologically determined but gender is a social construct. One is not born but becomes a woman through a process of gendering” said Dr. Chandreyee Das, Secretary of the Institute for Planning, Innovative Research, Appropriate Training and Extension (INSPIRATION, Kolkata) in a special seminar today at Ajay Divatia Lecture Hall organized by the Complaint Committee for Sexual Harassment of Women Employees at VECC.

Gender roles and identities are acquired through a process of gendering. Dr. Das explained that, this process is shaped by a number of agents of socialization e.g; the family, the education system, the workplace, the media, religious and cultural institutions. “Gender neutrality means treating everyone the same, of course not ignoring the special needs” she argued while interacting with the scientists.

Dr. Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, Associate Director of our centre, mentioned in his introductory remarks that at VECC, we don’t have any gender discrimination.

Prof. Sohini Basu, Centre for Human Development Administrative Staff College of India at Hyderabad delivered an illuminating talk on “Gender and Science” after Chandryee’s seminar. Prof. Basu talked about the problems of the poor representation of women scientists in senior positions in the Indian science and technology centers/institutes. She also discussed about the measures and recommendations taken by the government to encourage practice of science by women. 

“One of the aims of Prof Basu’s talk was to aware scientists, technician, students and employees about sexual harassment in the workplace”, remarked Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya, Chairperson of the Complaint Committee regarding Sexual Harassment of women employees at VECC.

Congratulations to our students Payal Mohanty, Victor Roy and Santosh K Das who have recently submitted their PhD thesis. Yesterday afternoon, they invited their professors, friends and well wishers for a snacks party to celebrate the occasion at the bubbly corridor of the Raja Ramanna Research Scholar wings.

Today is the last day for Santosh at VECC, he is going to catch the evening flight to Seoul, Korea to join a visiting fellow position at the Younsei University. Both Victor and Payal are waiting to join their new positions, as many overseas institutes require PhD degree for the recruitment of Post Doctoral Fellows. 

The Physics Group wishes all the best to Santosh, Payal and Victor for a bright career ahead.

“We are going to miss one of our sincere, quiet and efficient technical persons from tomorrow” said Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, in the farewell party of Mr Subrata Mukherjee who is officially attending his last day in VECC today. “Mr. Mukherjee single handedly made the scattering chamber of K130 Cyclotron beam hall as one of the best experimental facilities in our centre” Dr. Srivasatava mentioned in the gathering at the VIP lounge of our guest house today morning.

Mr. Subrata Mukherjee joined VECC in November, 1977 as a casual employee. He is a permanent member of VECC family since 1983. In his farewell speech, Subrata-da mentioned about his earlier days of working under the able supervision of Dr. Chintalpudi, Dr. Sudhee Ranjan Banerjee, and Sri G. S. N. Murthy, who build the scattering chamber of the K130 cyclotron beam hall. “The best thing about VECC is that, if you are interested to learn something and approach a person, everyone is eager to help you. No one has ever told ‘no’ to me, when I went for any kind of help” recalled Subrata-da.

While Dr. Sudhee Ranjan Banerjee mentioned Subrata Mukherjee’s expertise in machining, Dr. Saila Bhattacharya , one of the first users of the scattering chamber, pointed out his hard work. Dr. Sarmistha Bhattacharya, Dr. Tumpa Bhattacharya, Pulok Mukhopadhay and Anindita Choudhury who shared their office with Subrata-da, mentioned about his quite nature, helping attitude and passion to his work. They are surely going to miss a member of their “songsar” (family). According to Dr. Amlan Roy, they couldn’t achieve success in their precision measurement experiments without the help of Subrata-da. Dr. Chandana Bhattacharya recalled her close interaction with Subrata-da to solve vacuum related problems.  Dr. Gopal Mukherjee will miss Subrata-da every time when he will need to open the gate valve in the beam line!

“Every generation thinks that they are the best worker. It’s the responsibility of the future generation to prove it wrong” said Dr. Santanu Pal in his short speech. In a witty note, he reminded the scientists, technicians, students and employees in the gathering, that Mr Subrata Mukherjee is sharing his retirement day with the AEC chairman!

At the end of the party, Imran, the youngest member of our group handed over the farewell card and a box of small gift to Mr. Mukherjee.

Mr. Subrata Mukhrejee will be dearly missed amongst us. He still has a long way to go in his personal life. The Physics Group wishes a wonderful future for him.

Congratulations to Prasun Sharma Chowdhury, who had successfully defended his thesis on 23rd April, 2012. Prasun is the first student of Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI) from our centre to receive the PhD degree. He has been awarded with the prestigious D. S. Kothari Fellowship and will join Jadavpur University for his Post Doctoral work.

We wish all the best to Prasun for his future endeavor.

After months of preparation, editing and revision, the physics group has launched a comprehensive online info resource. The website features detailed activities of the group, with clickable sections segmenting it into four categories: Theoretical Physics, Experimental Nuclear Physics, Material Science and Nuclear Electronics.

Within each section, user can explore further the details about the key research activities in our group and research facilities. Every piece is highlighted with a short description, one or more photos. Details clickable info about the scientists and technical persons (some with photographs) are found in the “people” link while info about our post-docs and students are found in the “HRD” (acronym of Human Resource Development) tool bar of the landing page.

The site can be viewed at http://pgweb.vecc.gov.in/pgwebpage/

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please send your feedback .