Chandigarh (The Hawk): Experimental High Energy Physics group at Panjab University’s Physics department has been sanctioned Rs.6.13 Crore project under DAE-DST (Govt of India) Mega-Science initiative under SERB. This project is in continuation with the earlier funded projects and would allow the faculty and researchers to continue contributing to the CERN Switzerland based CMS experiment. Project Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Vipin Bhatnagar informed that the project would be executed under his and Dr. Sushil Chauhan’s, Co-PI of the project, supervision for the next five years. As part of the CMS collaboration, the PU group would be involved in fabricating and testing the detector systems here. These systems would be shipped and installed in the CMS detector at CERN in the coming years for data taking. The physics data analyses work is still continuing besides the hardware/software contributions taken up by the group over the next years.
The group at PU is involved in extremely intriguing Mega-Science research programs as a part of various experiments at leading international collaborations such as CMS at CERN, NOvA and DUNE at Fermilab. This group is also one of the biggest contributor to PU’s Research Citation index. The group, having the support of senior faculty members who have contributed to these projects in a big way, has made a big name for itself, both in the India and abroad. The group has received funds, till date, to the tune of Rs. 27 Crores and about 30 PhD students, have been/are associated with the group. Ten of them are working right now for their Ph.D.degrees. The group has dedicated support team of four technical staff members and a Post-Doctoral Fellow who have been contributing to the research efforts and tasks committed by the group at the international level.