Leaving for New Delhi tomorrow

I am leaving for New Delhi tomorrow for new year's eve celebration with cousins and friends. I will directly come to PRL, Ahmedabad to attend WHEPP from 2nd January 2010. Looking forward to some good times there with sub-zero temperature and good company :). Its a great pleasure to go to Delhi specially in winter. The chilly weather and the delicious street food like chats and all are so nostalgic to me. I will be there for just three and a half days and won't be able to meet all of my friends there. I hope they won't complain even if I don't meet them since I will be there for a small period. I am planning to meet my friends in IITD, JNU this time, but not very sure yet since these places are quite far from the my cousin's house where I will be staying. Anyway lets see how things go. I will have to utilize these three and a half days properly since I will be in Gujarat (a dry state) for the next six months. At the same time I will have to make sure that I can attend WHEPP from 2nd Jan without any hangover. Just keeping my fingers crossed :P

Visapur Trek

I along with six of my friends went for trekking yesterday to a place called Visapur. Its near Lonavala, you have to get down at the station called Malvali which comes just after Lonavala (towards Pune). The trek was not as long as Rajmachi but it was good. There were some parts where I chose to climb on pure rocks instead of the usual steps. It was amazing. It would have been impossible to climb like this during monsoon since the rocks would be slippery. The weather was sunny and very comfortable, slightly colder than Bombay. We left the IITB campus at around 5 am in the morning and went to Thane. We boarded the Indraini express, the general compartment was worse than hell, it was fully packed and reminded us of our journey back from Pune to Bombay after our NET exam. May be trains from Bombay to Pune are always like this. We probably did not feel as much tired after the trekking as we felt after the pathetic journey. Since there is no village near the Visapur fort (at the top of the mountain) we took food and water with us. After reaching the fort we had lunch there. After having food and taking some rest we tried to find out the way to go down (different from the way we went up). In between we were scared by a herd of monkeys and three buffaloes (wild probably). The buffaloes gave us such a dirty look that we got scared like anything. But thank god they did not chase us, we would have been in real trouble if they did that since we were at the top of the mountain and there were hardly any options to escape other than going down in a hurry. Anyway finally we found the way back which was very steep (almost 60 degree slope) and hence very enjoyable. We reached the train station at around 4 30 pm. We came to Lonavala by a local train and then boarded some express train coming from Bangalore there. Overall it was a great experience. I will miss such trekking in the next six months since I will be in Ahmedabad :( .

Porcupine Tree Live Concert was amazing :)

I was not much hopeful of getting an entry to the concert thinking about the crowd. As the entry was on first cum basis, I thought of going early but could not. Still I thought of giving it a try and stood in the long que. But even after almost two hours the que was not moving ahead and I found myself at the same position. Actually some stupid people were making entry from the front side without staying in the que thereby making rest of us look fool. Anyway I remain patient and hopeful and finally got entry after almost three hours. I missed Parikrama but Porcupine Tree yet to start their concert. The moment they started, it was an awesome experience, the ground started shaking and I felt as if a wind has blown from the stage and has hit me. I never got this kinda feeling when I was there in the Iron Maiden concert. Its just because Porcupine Tree performed in OAT(Open Air Theatre) which is a pretty small place compared to MMRDA grounds at Bandra Kurla complex where Maiden performed. I felt as if the smaller size of the OAT brought more excitement to every corner than it would have been in a huge ground. PT performed for one and half hour. Most of the songs were familiar to me which made me really enjoy the show unlike the Iron Maiden one. The songs like Halo, Time Flies, Hatesong, The sound of Muzak, Open Car, Russia on Ice were really amazing. The best part about their music was their unconventional style as I mentioned before. They are simply not like the heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden for which most of the people are crazy. They have a classic style and very often reminds me of Pink Floyd. It was not surprising when I found many people asking what Porcupine Tree is , what they do, where are they from etc etc. Apart from the music, there were some good food-stalls also including subway, McD, Barista, Dominoz etc. Overall my first Mood Indigo experience was really cool and it was really worth attending. I hope Mood I will bring more such international bands in coming years. Who knows, may be Green Day, RHCP in the future list..:D

First NET attempt didnt go well :(

Finally I am done with the CSIR NET examination last Sunday. It did not go very well. The first paper which is the objective one should have been good because not qualifying in the first paper would mean the second paper left uncorrected. The second paper was good however, I attempted twelve out of 16 required. In the first paper I could attempt around 55-60 out of 100 required. And since there is negative marking in the first paper I am not very much hopeful of clearing it. Anyway NET is not necessarily a one-time affair, I can give a number of attempts till I am 28 year old. Both the journey from and to Pune was horrible. We went by a bus, which was a air conditioned volvo but it sucked more than a government non-AC bus. It took around five hours to reach Pune. But the place we stayed in Pune was superb. The person is a colleague of one my friend's dad. He made real good arrangement for all of us and took us to a restaurant where we had some real good food (which I don't generally expect in Bombay). The examination center was pathetic, it took a long time to find out the room where we are supposed to write our exam. My room was in the 3rd floor of a stupid building where there was no toilet. I had to walk downstairs and go behind the building to piss. Really horrible. Exam was horrible as I have already mentioned. The only good thing was the food we had in lunch. I was surprised by the good and not too spicy food in Pune in both the restaurants we went. The city overall looked cleaner than Bombay. The journey back from Pune to Bombay was too hectic. We came by intercity express general class and may be because of weekend it was highly crowded (quite comparable to a bombay local from Thane to VT at peak hours). I could not find any seat, I could not even move my body while standing, I am still feeling tired because of that. Anyway we enjoyed the trip much more than the exam. Hope I will perform better in my next NET attempt :P

Ohh God..please take me out of this...

Life was pretty cool until few days back. Suddenly so many things have started occupying my mind:

1. Today is December 17th and still grades for the course HS 699 which I did in the last semester have not yet come. The Department should have sent the seminar presentation skill marks to the Academic office but the stupid losers have not done yet. When I went to the academic office they told me that all the students whose marks have not come from the department will be given NP(Not Passed) grades. Can you believe this? It was this damn useless course for which I have come to IITB campus from IIT Gn (where my supervisor is) sacrificing my research and even after attending most of the lectures and passing the written component, I am in a situation of being failed just because the stupid department forgot to send my seminar marks. Nothing can be more frustrating than this.

2. I need to register for PhD which has already been delayed by almost one year for similar stupid reasons. And since HS 699 grades have not come yet I am not being able to do this important thing also.

3. I am planning to go to WHEPP, Asian Winter School, SERC Main School in the next semester for which I need to take academic leave from the institute. I also want to go to PRL, Ahmedabad for some research work. Basically I need to apply for academic leave for the whole semester. In a sucking institute like IITB, this is not a very trivial process. I have to write an application to Dean AP which will be forwarded by my supervisor and head of Physics department. After approval from Dean AP comes I need to write to Dean SA again forwarded by my supervisor and head of department for hostel room retention. I have hardly one week for all these, I just hope I will be able to get all these done.

4. I have the stupid NET exam on next Sunday that too in Pune, three hour journey from Bombay. Its unbelievable that CSIR-UGC don't consider a city like Bombay appropriate for conducting NET examination. I have to go to Pune one night before so that the next day I can reach the examination center on time.

5. There is no food in the hostel from 19th December and no canteen also. Gonna starve like hell :(
I just hope God (if He exists) will take me out of all these shits soon.

Reviewer's comments I

Today I got the first set of comments from reviewers of Physics Letters B. They have sent eight comments. Most of them are minor ones which can be fixed by rephrasing some sentences. Some sentences are communicating a different meaning than what we want. So fixing them is not a big deal. However there is a serious conceptual issue which needs some careful study. I need to go to PRL, Ahmedabad soon to work with my collaborator on this issue and resubmit the paper again. I am quite sick of working alone and communicating via emails. There always remain a communication gap in this process. The issue we need to study is regarding R-parity violation in our model and the stability of dark matter candidate. Although any R-parity violating supersymmetric model will rule out a stable dark matter candidate, in our model I still think we can have a stable dark matter candidate which is basically the LSP (Lightest supersymmetric particle). Since our model has $ U(1)_{B-L} $ gauge symmetry, all the R-parity $ R_p = (-1)^{3(B-L)+2s} $ violating dimension four terms are absent from the lagrangian. However the terms which is responsible for mixing the standard model neutrinos with the singlet sterile neutrinos violate R-parity which we are calling as accidental breaking. Since neutrinos are even and the sterile gauge singlet fermions are odd under R-parity, their mixing will of course violate R-parity. But although the sterile neutrino need not be stable unless we incorporate some other discrete symmetries, its superpartner can be stable if its the LSP. Because there is no term in the superpotential which makes this LSP decay into two standard model particles. Hence if the superpartner of the sterile singlet neutrino becomes the LSP, it can be a stable dark matter candidate. I hope we will be able to convince the reviewers through these arguments, without calculating the life time of the dark matter candidates. The following video tells how embarrasing reviewer's comments are sometimes :D

Back in Bombay

I came back last night from Guwahati. The train was awfully late but the journey was peaceful as I got some nice company, a family from Jorhat and Chetan Bhagat's latest book Two States. The book is not a very good one but gave me a good company during the journey which is otherwise horrible as always. The story is dramatic, like many bollywood movies which describes the problems with inter-community marriages in India. The way Chetan has written it looks as if he has just copied everything from his diary with little changes in the names of different persons involved. Anyway although this is his fourth novel, it is the first one I have read, that too under compulsion as I had nothing else to do during the 58 hour long train journey.

The cold weather in Guwahati gave me cold, cough and a very bad throat which I am yet to recover from. Just after coming back I got two good news: I got AA in the quantum optics exam (I have no clue how it happened) and I got an invitation from the SERC main school organizers to attend the school in April. With the coursework finally over and me passing them, it seems like everything will happen in the next semester like I had planned. But I am still not sure about the PRL thing, whether I will be able to shift from IITB to PRL for the whole semester. Hope that will happen otherwise I am screwed again. One headache now is to appear the NET exam on Dec 20th which I had registered without thinking if I would be able to prepare for it at all. I got photocopy of the NET guide book almost two months back but yet to open its first page. With just nine days remaining for the exam, I am not being able to gather courage to go through it. Anyway I am not sure at all if I will appear it, lets see..if I feel I know at least 30 percent of the syllabus by Dec 19th, I will probably appear it.

Leaving for Calcutta->Guwahati tonight :)

I am leaving for Guwahatii via Calcutta tonight. Its a pretty long journey, around 3000 kilometers. Although going to my state is always a great pleasure, I will probably be missing couple of things in Bombay. There are some lecture series coming up in this week organized by the SAPD. One more important thing is that my supervisor might come on 4th Dec and I did not know this before I booked my tickets, so can't help. I hope he is not coming to take a note of my research progress, he might be coming for some academic office meeting as usual. After coming from home I was planning to go to PRL, Ahmedabad for one week but not being able to get a ticket. So not much sure about that. Anyway hope to get a feeling of chilly winter in this trip after leaving Bombay where people are still sweating.

Never imagined Porcupine Tree to be like this..

Its been just one month I have started downloading some songs by Porcupine Tree. Not that I did not know about this band before, but I thought this is a new band and will be singing some metal of which I am not a very big fan. I just wanted to have a flavor of their music before deciding whether to attend their live show on 21st December or not. To my surprise, I found them to be a much better band contrary to what I guessed and they are not a new band at all. I found their albums starting from 1989. Their music reminds me of Pink Floyd, so relaxing, very soothing. I am not much familiar with the classifications of rock music, but Porcupine Tree belongs to Progressive rock band category I guess. After getting a little flavor of their music through the albums Stars Die, Absentia and The Sky Moves Sideways I can now imagine why this band is not very popular in India except in North-East India probably where the sense of music is drastically different. The common Indian music lovers are mostly towards metal nowadays, wearing funky t-shirts, showing middle finger, using slang very often is what define their choice of music. I realized this when I went for the Iron Maiden concert in Bombay (Feb,2008). If the same crowd comes to Porcupine Tree concert for example, I don't think they gonna enjoy it. But being a great Pink Floyd fan, I am really looking forward to this similar rock band, may not be for lots of head-banging but to feel the beauty of classic rock for the first time in a live concert.

The Pain of being a nine point someone

I don't know what Chetan Bhagat has written in his first novel "five point someone"; I just know that the phrase five point someone refers to those IITians who has CPI (cumulative performance index) between 5 and 6. It's quite well-known the kind of depression an IITian suffer from when he or she fails to perform in the academic system as it was expected. This has led to many incidents in different IIT's where students chose the most extreme step to come out of this stress and depression. Recently in IIT Bombay, there was a suicide case by a student of 2nd year BTech programme. His poor performance in class is said to be the probable reason behind it. But why such students get admitted after all? Does not it mean that the IIT entrance system of admitting students to various programs have failed totally? Is there any huge gap between the admission criteria and the academic standards? I am not an expert to answer such questions. But I would like to mention one point that poor performance may not be the only reason behind depression. There are other reasons also which are overlooked most of the time. IIT system has many faults in it which can even make an academic topper feel depressed. I do not need to talk about anyone else. Myself is the best example. I have always been an academic topper till my BSc. During my MSc in IIT B also I was the second topper among the 2 year MSc as well as MSc-PhD dual degree students and could maintain a CPI of 9.15 at the end of two years. Unfortunately CPI is not everything which count in life. After I moved into research part of my MS-PhD dual degree course, my expectations, my motivations and my excitements started disappearing. The first blow came to me when my supervisor was appointed as dean in a different IIT, and he had to shift there temporarily and he is still there. Its one and half year till then he has not come back to his home institute and during this one and half year neither I have any publication with him nor any good progress in work has happened. May be I am not a very smart guy to do research through email discussions. Although I spent few months in that IIT where my supervisor is appointed as dean, I could not do much work since he hardly could give me time. That was quite natural since a dean has to do lots of non-academic things. The second and the most recent blow came when I got the news that my supervisor is going to Canada on sabbatical for one year. So I will be completing almost two and half years without any good research work by the end of 2010. Aren't these more than enough to bring too much depression and stress into life? The IIT system doesn't care what will happen to a PhD student if his/her supervisor is sent to some other place to do some no-academic things, it does not care what will happen to a student when a faculty goes on sabbatical for one year. IIT should give a thought about all these and should not run into a conclusion that only poor academic performance creates stress, depression among students.

Remembering 26-11

Today is the first anniversary of the most horrible terrorist attack not only in Bombay, but in the entire country which killed around two hundred people including a few foreigners. Although after that incident no such major terrorist attacks have happened so far, it's difficult to comment on how much India has learned from it and how much improvement on the internal security have taken place. I still feel somehow, our security forces are not well-equipped although a specialized commandos have been deployed in Bombay almost after one year of 26-11 to prevent further attacks. I also doubt if the victims got enough compensations from the Government. Needless to talk about the culprits behind this attack, no punishment has been given so far, the trials are going on in a never-ending way. It seems unlikely that Indian judiciary system will award them capital punishments keeping an eye on the fact that many such terrorists like Afzal Guru (behind parliament attacks) are still alive and may be will be freed under Kandahar Airline hijack situations. Its really frustrating for the common Indian citizen to see such stupid things happening in the country, mass murderers are kept alive and freed to invite more situations where the common public have to suffer. Anyway I pray for all the victims as well as their families on the occasion of 1st anniversary of 26-11 and just hope Bombay would never suffer like this.

Porcupine Tree Live 21st Dec, 2009

I came to know about this awesome news much before, but forgot to give a blog update. Porcupine Tree(PT) is coming to India for the first time on 21st December and the best thing for IITB people is that PT will be performing right in the institute open air theater as a part of institute annual cultural festival Mood Indigo. This will be fourth Mood Indigo during my stay in the campus, but this will be the first time I am going to attend, I simply can't afford to miss PT. Although various Indian bands like Zero, Parikrama keep performing almost every year in Mood Indigo, I never had much interest in them since I am very much familiar to their live concerts. But this year Mood Indigo is certainly special, hope PT will give us a memorable experience. The details about the concert can be found here http://www.moodi.org/porcupinetree/

"Take Home" exam killing me and my time so much :(

Although we thought a "take home" exam on Quantum Optics would make life pretty simple, now after getting the question paper, that intuition has changed completely. The paper contains fourteen questions and each of them is damn lengthy involving some tedious mindless calculations except a few conceptual ones. It would have been better if there were an open book three hours exam no matter how much I scored, but the pain would have gone and I could have done something else. I have solved around 8-9 out of 14 and not in a mood to do the remaining ones. Anyway the good thing is that this is the last course-work exam in IIT for me, life is gonna be pretty cool after it.

8522km

8522 km...Don't think I am talking about some new neutrino baseline which people might guess since they always complain I never write anything other than physics. It's the distance I have to cover by Indian Railways during a span of just one month from 2nd Dec to 10 Jan. It could have been fun if trains were like some of those in Europe. But the trains here are disgusting, they don't have good catering service, clean toilets, clean stations as well. And the worst thing is the crowd, they are simply unbearable nowadays specially those who travel in the second class non-AC compartments. But after spending lots of money on my home trip by air during Durga puja two months back, I can't even afford to make journey by AC-coach of Indian Railways. Except for one ticket, I have made all the tickets in non-AC coaches. The problem is the school and workshop I will be attending in between are not providing me any travel grant also, so not in a mood to spend money from my own pocket. Hope I will enjoy the journey somehow. Even if it's not enjoyable, hope it won't be embarrassing as it happens in many case when trains get delayed by so many hours. Just keeping my fingers crossed now :)

Thanks to Media for creating too much hype about Swine flu ;)

Most of us are aware of the swine flu panic in India 2-3 months back. The panic was more because of media hype and not because of the death toll. Finally the government had to come in between media and public asking the media not to give too much publicity which may create chaos in public life. Although the media hype was for no good in the public interest, it however had a good effect in me. I was so scared that I started taking extra care. Suddenly, healthy and hygienic food became a priority in my life which I am afraid if were there in the past at all. Previously I used to miss breakfast almost everyday, but life after that has totally changed. I never miss breakfast nowadays, try to eat enough food no matter how bad the taste is. And the best thing was I quit smoking almost during that time. Although I did not see any link between swine flu and smoking, yet I did not want to take any risk and made sure that I don't consume anything which may be harmful. Now after completing three months without smoking, I feel that I don't have any interest in it. I don't know why I started smoking few years back, may be just for fun. I used to smoke during the most relaxing time in a day, contrary to others probably who smoke only when they get tensed. Although there was no need of smoking in my life, I just used to smoke casually and suddenly it became a kind of addiction. However it was not very bad as I never took more than one cigarette per day. Anyway I feel very happy today that I am not used to such a bad habit now. It really sucks! Thanks a lot again to the unwanted media hype :)

Sleeping less than 7 hours a day?

Today I got a mail from someone in the department of metallurgy and material science, IIT Bombay which emphasizes on the need of good sleep. In fact he forwarded the mail to all the IIT B people. It's a very good time to remind all the students with the probable consequences of not having good sleep since end semester examination has already started and most of the students might be planning night outs to prepare for examination. The fellow who has sent the mail seems to have collected a few very important points:

1. Short sleep duration (less than 5 or 5-6 hours) increased risk for high BP by 350% to 500% compared to those who slept longer than 6 hours per night. Paper published in 2009. And high BP kills for sure.

2. Young people (25-49 years of age) are twice as likely to get high BP if they sleep less. Paper published in 2006.

3. Individuals who slept less than 5 hours a night had a 3-fold increased risk of heart attacks. Paper published in 1999.
4. Complete and partial lack of sleep increased the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stayed high.
5. Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumour Nacrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They
increase risk of many medical conditions including cancer, arthritis and hear disease. Paper
published in 2004.
6. Sleeping for less than or equal to five hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart diseases.
Sleeping for less than or equal to 6 hours per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease. Paper
published in 2006.

The fellow has also pointed out the possible region behind the sudden death of a Mumbai based
CEO of some MNC as the lack of sleep. I really appreciate the effort made by him. I hope the IIT junta will pay a little attention to it.

Too many confusions....

As it is obvious from one of my previous posts, I am having lots of confusions regarding the workshop, schools, conference I am going to attend shortly. Although I have decided to attend both WHEP (partially) and Asian Winter School, today I got a mail from WHEP organizers asking me to send them my working group preferences. I was interested in Neutrinos and Beyond Standard Model Physics group among others like Astroparticle physics and Cosmology. But today I saw the WHEP web-page where the working group themes were given. I was surprised that the Neutrino and BSM working group themes have all neutrino physics stuffs like neutrino oscillation, INO(Indian Neutrino Observatory) Physics, CP -violation etc. I was thinking there would be many other interesting topics like supersymmetry, GUT etc. I still believe these will somehow come into the discussions there, otherwise I will definitely give up if people just keep talking about the $\theta_{13}$ parameter of neutrino oscillations. To clear my confusion regarding the preference of working group I mailed to my supervisor and he asked me to give the Neutrino and BSM group as 1st preference since the probable participants in this group will be more into model building in particle physics (which is of my interest) than the Astroparticle Physics group.

To my surprise I have also got a mail from the organizers of a conference called Particle Physics at the LHC era in Chile. I completely forgot that I even registered for it. Since it clashes with WHEP, I had to send the organizers a mail saying I won't be able to come. It could have been nice to visit Chile, although such countries don't get much attention, yet I have a dream to visit places like Latin America, Africa at some point of my life.

Next semester will be more into travelling than research :P

As suggested by my supervisor I have finally decided to attend both WHEPP (02-12 Jan, 2010) as well as the Asian Winter school (organized by ICTS from 11-20 Jan, 2010). However I will be missing three days of WHEPP since I have to leave Ahmedabad on 10th Jan and go to Mahabaleshwar where the winter school will be held. I am also hopeful of getting selected for the SERC main school in Punjab University during the month of April. In between I am also planning to go home for two weeks. As of now, it seems I will have to travel like hell from next month onwards. Just after this sem gets over, I am planning to go to Gandhinagar for one or two weeks for some work, then will come back again to Bombay. In the last week of December I will go to Delhi for new year eve celebration from where I will directly come to Ahmedabad for WHEPP. Since nobody is going to pay for my travel expenses, I have booked all the tickets in sleeper class of Indian Railway to keep my expenditure low. I am wondering after all these journey till 20th January, whether I will have any energy left to go again by train to my hometown which takes around 60 hours from Bombay by the only train in that route. I have to look for some cheap flight tickets for sure. After my home trip I may directly go to Ahmedabad to work with my collaborators in PRL. But that's not yet decided, I am just hopeful of going there. Otherwise there won't be any progress if I stay in my home institute since my supervisor will be off for Canada for one year starting January 1.

The 4th Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology

Today I have got a mail from the organizers asking me to give the travel details if I would like to attend the Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology to be held in Mahabaleshwar, India from 11 January to 20th January, 2010. It would be a great pleasure to attend this school since many big shots from across the world including Harvard, Princeton are coming. But this school has a date clash with WHEPP (2 Jan-12 Jan) about which I have mentioned in the previous post. I am quite surprised since both the school as well as the workshop have been organized by the same institute ICTS (International Center for Theoretical Science, http://www.icts.res.in/). Although the school will cover mainly theoretical aspects from string theory point of view and the workshop is on phenomenology, yet I believe there will be lots of people who have common interests in both strings as well as HEP phenomenology. It could have been nice to leave an option for such people having common interest to attend both the school and the workshop. Although the phenomenology workshop is more important for me from my current research point of view, I am not being able to resist my temptation of bunking the last two days of workshop and go to the school ;). Anyway I am hopeful of arriving at conclusion which one to attend before it is too late..:)

WHEPP XI 02-12 Jan, 2010 @PRL, Ahmedabad

The next Workshop in High Energy Physics Phenomenology(WHEPP) will be in Physical Research Laboratory(PRL) Ahmedabad, India from 2nd to 12 January 2010. The workshop will be having five working groups: Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology, Neutrinos and Physics Beyond the Standard Model, LHC physics, QCD and QGP and B-Physics. There will be 15 review talks and same number of specialized talks during the first five days of the workshop. The first week participants are required to join one of the working groups and start discussing possible new projects. The second half of the workshop is devoted entirely to working group activities. At the end of the workshop the coordinators of the working groups will summarize the progress of new projects started in the workshop. I have got an invitation today to participate in the workshop. Thanks to the organizers for that. Its been a long time I have not gone for any schools, conference and life has become too boring staying at the same place. Looking forward to WHEPP XI and hope to have lots of fun.

APKGK is a good timepass..

After watching most of the hollywood blockbusters which tops the IMDB best movie list, nowadays I have been trying my luck on some bollywood commercial movies. You can never trust newspaper reviews about bollywood commercial movies, the only way to know about the movie is to try it. I know it's quite tough, you can't go on trying all the movies since most of them are pathetic. You need to be very very lucky to find a good movie as the first one to pick up. I am lucky in that sense as I have picked up two good (better call them average) movies, Wake up Sid(WUS) and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani (APKGK). I posted sometime back regarding my opinions on Wake up Sid. Yesterday I watched the second one. Surprisingly both of them have Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role and I found the character played by him in both the movies somewhat similar. An immature, careless guy discovering life and love which have made him matured, serious about life and all. APKGK is more like a comedy than WUS having some really funny and somewhat stupid scenes in between. Katrina is looking cute as always, Ranbeer looking stupid, confused as he always is. Although it is not a very good movie, at least I was not upset after watching it. I am dying to watch some good English or Hindi movie for a long time. The best movie I have watched in the last couple of months is a German one called "Der Untergang" (The Downfall) with English subtitles. It is a really good movie and worth watching at least once. Hope to see some good English/Hindi releases during the Christmas time.

A great day indeed...!!..;)

I must say today is a really great day for me. My PhD supervisor replied to my mail just 21 minutes after I wrote it. Usually it takes months to get a reply :P. I think he might have found my mail interesting as I have written about some latest calculations and results I have got along with an attachment. Although I was quite upset after I saw a paper two days back where similar works have been done, yet I have argued the differences in my calculations from that in my draft as well as in the mail. Hope my supervisor will appreciate it. Till then, just keeping my fingers crossed :).

A boost for Basic Science Research in India

Shedding light on the fact(which has always been overlooked) that basic science research in India is still not upto the level of expectation, the department of science and technology(DST) has come up with a brand new policy to motivate young minds to opt for science. The usual trend among bright young students in India has always been to go for engineering or medical in reputed institutes like IIT, NIT, AIIMS etc. after passing out from schools. It is believed among the common people that only those students take science after school who could not manage to get a place in engineering or medical. Of course it does not make sense as someone may be genuinely interested in basic science and does not care what engineering or medical is. The reason behind such a trend is of course the much better job prospects after engineering/medical than basic science. Looking at the fact that students may not take science fearing no good job after MSc, the DST has come up with a policy to provide all kinds of financial support to students after MSc to carry out their research project for two years. However this grant will expire after two years and will be re allotted to some other students. DST believes that within two years the student will be able to make himself/herself eligible for a job. Well, I do not know how that gonna happen. In the news article appeared in Times of India which I read yesterday (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Science-graduates-to-be-paid-to-stay-in-class/articleshow/5190812.cms), it is not clearly given if the student has to carry out project under the supervision of some professor/scientist. What I am wondering is, suppose a student gets a grant to work on string theory for two years, what kind of job offer he/she will receive after he/she is done with the project. Since he/she is not a PhD yet, the project does not qualify them to get faculty position somewhere, and it is also a questionable how much good work he/she will be doing in two years. Although such policies are always good to encourage the students towards basic science, I see lots of ambiguities in it. I feel it might be a better idea to invest these money providing better facilities and stipends to PhD students which will encourage students to do research as well as will assure a job after completing PhD in any field which may not be true after a two year project. Anyway, that's what my opinion is. I wish this new DST move a great success, and hope many students will get benefited from it.

Meeting part II

Today we had the technical meeting where we discussed the objectives of the project I talked about in my previous post. There were so many discussions on various phenomenology issues, LHC signatures etc, I gave up completely in between. May be I do not like much to handle numbers which phenomenologist mostly keep doing from various experimental point of view. Anyway, at least Prof Godbole has motivated us to work on a particular problem no matter how much chances are there to get some positive output. I guess my job will be to do some dirty calculations using some numerical package. Although I hate such stuffs very much, I could not make it clear in front of the group members and they got convinced that I would be a good "bakra" whom they can ask to do such numerical stuffs. But before starting the numerical part, I need to get some motivations and feel of the problem, which I have not got completely so far. May be I need to go through all the references we discussed today and make a clear picture of the objectives as well as the motivations. I hope this project at least will keep me busy for the next year which will be good in the sense that my supervisor will be away on sabbatical.

Meeting part I

Finally it happened today, the much awaited meeting with my supervisor. I was with him for almost five hours including lunch. Though there were not much technical discussion, I got a bad headache after the meeting, and had to drink 3 cups of expresso to feel better ;-) . Anyway I fortunately could get my PhD registration form signed from him which I was supposed to submit in January 2009. I hope the stupid academic office won't delay my degree for this. Well, today Prof Godbole from CHEP, IISc Bangalore has also come to the department for discussions related to a DST(Department of Science and Technology) project which has been sanctioned recently. The project is all about Symmetries beyond the standard model and possible LHC signatures as well as connection to dark matter. The topic seems interesting from current research trends in high energy physics. There seems to be so much work going on these issues, I am totally confused which one to pick up and move ahead. There are many ways to incorporate higher symmetries in the standard model and each one has its own motivations. Tomorrow we will be having a formal meeting with Prof Godbole along with my supervisor as well as Prof Ramadevi and to discuss how to proceed. And I have to go through three PRD's tonight, and report if I find something interesting :( . By the way it was a great pleasure to meet Prof Godbole for the first time in a formal way. I became a fan of her after she published her book "Theory and Phenomenology of Sparticles" with Manuel Drees and Probir Roy. I will call it the bible of supersymmetry phenomenology. I am looking forward to tomorrow's meeting with the hope of getting some new ideas to work with :-)

Meeting with Supervisor after three Months..;-)

Tomorrow I am hopeful of catching up with my PhD supervisor as he is visiting his home institute for two days. I met him in the first week of August, since then there were around 15 email exchanges between us related to various stuffs. Although he managed to give couple of useful feedbacks regarding my paper (which I have recently submitted to PLB) , I am not being able to work much towards my next paper. I always feel, I need to do lots of live discussions to clear doubts and move ahead which is hardly a reality. And my supervisor is so busy with non-academic activities that he hardly replies to my mails. Sometimes I get replies to some mails sent around two months before. I do not think I am smart enough to carry on my research like that. I always feel like communicating this to him, specially from next semester point of view. This semester at least I am finishing my coursework although not being able to do much research , but in the next semester I have no purpose of staying in the campus if my supervisor is not here. The problem is that he is going to McGill on sabbatical for the next semester, which again gonna screw my research. I have spent two semesters already here in the campus (autumn 2008, autumn 2009) without much progress in my work as my supervisor was in a different institute. I just do not want to make such a repetition in the next semester. It's two frustrating to spend days without any useful work. Let's see what happens tomorrow, just keeping my fingers crossed.

May their souls rest in peace...

Today, the 30th October reminds us of the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Assam. A couple of serial blasts within few hours rocked various parts of the state with Guwahati, the heart of North-East the worst sufferer. More than 100 people were killed and thousand injured in the blasts. Guwahati probably does not live with the same spirit as Bombay lives and I am pretty sure the memories of last year are still haunting the Guwahatians. While talking to friends, relatives staying in the city I feel it, they are scared to go out for classes, office etc as if the same thing gonna happen today which happened one year back. As usual, the local media is also making too much hype putting all those terrible blast pictures on the front pages of news papers. Anyway life is not all about getting scared thinking what happened in the past, people need to move on looking towards a better future. Let's pray for all those innocent victims, may their souls rest in peace.

Do we need "Bombay to Mumbai" type conversions every year?

It has become so common nowadays to see changes in the name of cities, streets as well as states in India. Every time I see the news "Union Cabinet has approved the change in nomenclature from xyz to abc", I find it so odd. People are so used to the earlier names that such a sudden change brings real chaos. Someone says correctly that everything was done by the British, we just keep changing the names. I agree that, some regional sentiments are attached to such changes. The names given by the British to the cities, states may not sound like the way it should be according to the language specific to that state. But why no one was there to think about it before? Its more than sixty years now since India got independence and now people are becoming desperate to change everything. They don't even realize how long it will take for the new name they give to become familiar to the world. For example if you change the name of a fifty year old institute like IIT Bombay to IIT Mumbai just because some political parties change the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai, people would find it very difficult (specially abroad) whether these two names correspond to the same institute or not and that will surely gonna affect the academic part. But no matter what happens to the institute reputation and popularity, political parties will change the name for sure sooner or later. Today I have seen "Orissa is now Odisha, Oriya becomes Odiya" in Times of India which is just a replica of Bombay->Mumbai, Bangalore->Bangaluru and many others. I remember people in my state were also proposing the change of the name from "Assam" to "Asom". I am however not in favor of it. Basically the true ethnic pronounciation is neither Assam nor Asom. It is just a convenient way to write since there are some letters in Assamese alphabet which are pronounced in such a way that there is no counterpart in English or in Hindi. People write those alphabets either by using "s" or "h" in English. Thus although change in such nomenclature may have some correctness in the case of other states, this is not the case with "Assam->Asom". May be we should better stick to the earlier and most popular name of our state. Personally I feel, its the people of the state who have to carry the true identity of the state they belong to and their ethnic culture, not the name of the state.

Coupling Constant Unification

Currently I am working on gauge coupling unification in certain specific models. I studied basic renormalization in abelian gauge theory as well as scalar field theory during my MSc coursework but did not study renormalization group evolution properly. My supervisor advised me to look at Weinberg's QFT volumes, and believe me I liked the way this renormalization topic is written in that book and that has probably given me enough enthu to spend 3500 bucks to buy all the three volumes. The renormalization group evolution is given by $ \mu (d g/d \mu) = \beta(g) $, where g is the coupling constant and $ \mu $ is the mass scale. Thus this equation basically predicts the evolution of the gauge coupling constant with energy scale. I have not yet looked into the derivations of the beta functions for the most general case. I am just using the standard formula for one-loop beta function from text books and using it in my own model. The new thing I have learnt is that choosing a specific gauge group does not decide the beta function completely. Its the particle content of that group: the fermions, gauge bosons as well as Higgs scalars which decide the form of beta function. Thus for the same gauge group if we modify the particle content, the beta function will also change and accordingly the evolution of the coupling constants.

String Theory Video Lecture Part 5

Yesterday we had the video screening of String Theory Lecture part 5 by Prof Shiraz Minwalla. It was longer than the previous ones as well as harder to follow. He was doing Path Integrals and Conformal Field Theory most of the time, both of which I have not learned yet in a systematic way. He is referring to the chapter on CFT in Polchincki's book. I really need to go through it before attending the next video. It is not possible to sleep also during the video lecture since not more than five people come for it...:P Hence there is no other way than listening carefully to what Prof Minwalla says.

An Unbelievable/Uncomfortable/Inconvenient Truth

Yesterday I came to know about an article related to P. Sainath, the 2007 winner of Magsaysay Award for journalism, literature, and creative communication arts and his studies as well as various published articles on Indian Poverty. The article titled "Uncomfortable Truth: P. Sainath reminds us that India is still a poor country" was published more than one year ago. The link to the same is here (http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/173677093_1.html). It is billion times more shocking than "An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary film on global warming. Nowadays due to media coverage as well as increase in public awareness, global warming has become the topic of discussion everywhere and people at least know what it is. But this "Uncomfortable Truth" about Indian poverty will probably give a shock to people from all over the world. Specially at a time when Indian economy is considered as one of the fastest growing economy and people projecting Indian economy as one of the most dominant one in coming years, people can hardly imagine that more than seventy percent of the Indian population is below the so called poverty line. However the Government report says a different story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India). It is difficult to say which one is true. But an extensive study made by a person like P. Sainath can not be ignored at all. I do not know how the Indian Government will react to it. But if it is true, it will surely show how fragile Indian economy is. After all, an economy which is surviving on just one fourth of the population can not be a stable economy although for a certain period it may show significant growth. I have just come to know that P. Sainath is coming to IIT Bombay sometime in November. I hope he will make the things clear to us.

China leaves no stone unturned to keep India worried all the time..

From Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, from fake medicines with "Made in India" tag to Extremists in North East, it seems China is very much interested in keeping India worried. After declaring Sikkim as a part of India, China has directed its attention towards Kashmir and North East, the two most unstable regions of India hit by insurgency problem and many others. Needless to mention that China claims several thousands square kilometers of Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory. Having objected to Dalai Lama's proposed visit to Tawang in November, China even raised protest after the Indian PM visited Arunachal. It is also believed for a long time that the militants in the North Eastern states of India who are fighting for so called "sovereignty" get arms as well as shelter in China. According to media report China is also planning to construct a dam in Tibet which will severely affect the flow of the river Brahmaputra in Assam. It has also been reported that China is involved in various civilian projects (and may be military also) in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) region, which India considers as illegally occupied by Pakistan. Apart from issuing separate visa to Indian nationals who are from Kashmir, China is now projecting Kashmir as a separate country. The handouts given to invited journalists in Tibet by the Chinese Government says "Tibet borders with India, Nepal, Myanmar and Kashmir". What the hell does it mean? Leave these political issues aside. China is doing more than that. Few months back I have seen in the news that China is exporting fake medicines with "Made in India" tag to African countries. What China wants after all? They would have probably invaded India again like they did in 1962 if India had not developed nukes by now. I hope India will act strongly against all these in a diplomatic way. China may be the fastest growing economy in the world, it may have the largest military strength, but that does not mean they will keep doing whatever they want. I was surprised to see the US president cancelling his meeting with Dalai Lama(during His visit to the US) just to keep the Chinese happy before his visit to China. Anyway I know too little politics to comment more on such issues. Its better to get back to physics...:)

Hitler and IIT attendence...a must watch video..:D

Yesterday one of my friend suggested me to watch this video. This video is originally taken from the movie 'Downfall(Der Untergang)'. But a few clever IIT ians have changed the subtitles in such way that after watching this video people (who don't understant German of course) won't believe that it's fake. Have a look:

Purpose of Blogging

Sometimes I wonder why I am spending my time on the blogosphere. I keep writing random stuffs through which I don't have to carry any information to anyone. And I don't even think whatever I write here may prove to be useful for someone. But personally I was benefited a lot by several blogs. Those sincere bloggers are really doing a great job by sharing their ideas, opinions related to diverse fields. Specially the physics stuffs they write are very recent as well as significant. Whereas I use my blog as an open diary. I just write whatever I learn, whatever I do and all. I don't even know if they are worth writing, but it seems from a couple of months it has become one of my hobbies. I hope after spending another two-three years on the blogosphere I would be able to write some constructive things based on my own ideas.

Beer with Nair

After he got his "awesome-max" job few months back, he has sponsored beer party twice so far for us (his classmates who have not yet got their degree..:(.. ). Yesterday we had the occasion once again for such a beer party. After his first come back from the US, we had the first one where we had some Mexican beer called Corona. I never heard of it before, but believe me, it does not suck at all like Indian beers. It was really awesome. Yesterday I don't remember which beer we had, but it was not bad. Since I drink very rarely nowadays, yesterday I could not drink more than say 600 ml. It seems my capacity has fallen down a lot, not bad huh? Actually nowadays very few such occasions come and without any occasion I do not prefer to drink at all. I hope the next occasion will come again when Nair will come back from the US after six weeks. Thanks a lot Nair, keep sponsoring beer party every time you come home from abroad.

"What is more important is Science, not the country of origin of a scientist"...This is what Chemistry 09 Nobel Winner has to say!!

I saw a Times of India article today titled "A little less nationalistic hero worship, please" (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/india/A-little-less-nationalistic-hero-worship-please/articleshow/5129529.cms) by 2009 Chemistry Nobel winner (with two others) Prof Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. It was quite natural for the billion Indians to cheer for him after he got the prize. But what he wants from us is to appreciate science more than nationalistic worship. Well, from my point of view he is correct. In the age of globalisation we after all have to work together to make earth a better place to live in rather than confining within the country barriers. However, I don't think Indians overreacted when he got the prize. Looking at the fact that there are very few Nobel laureates from this country which however has given birth to many great scientists as great as Nobel Laureates, people became naturally overwhelmed with joy. As mentioned in the article, many Indians were offended when Prof Ramakrishnan said "nationality being an accident of birth", and that's why he has come up with this TOI article to apologise as well as to convey a very important message why appreciating science is more important. Some of his lines as quoted from the article are ....

"...The best way to take pleasure in someone’s achievement is to take an interest in their work and feel motivated to learn more about science. I remember reading about Gellman’s work as an undergraduate in Baroda, and, when he won the Nobel prize, rushing upstairs to tell my parents. It did not matter to me whether he was Indian or not. In my case, I am lucky to have had a combination of education, opportunities and a great team of co-workers to have made a contribution to an important problem. I am not personally that important. If I hadn’t existed, this work would still have been done. It is the work that is important, and that should be what excites people....."

It is after all his capability to come out of country barriers and work for the human being as a whole which makes him so special. Think Global..Act Global...:)

SERC XXV Main School in Theoretical High Energy Physics

The official announcement for the 25th SERC (Science and Engineering Research Council) school in theoretical high energy physics to be held in Punjab University, Chandigarh, India from 2-22nd April, 2010 came almost one month before. However the official poster for advertisement came two days back. The courses this year seems interesting like those of the previous school. Usually what happens is that people don't attend two consecutive SERC main school since the topics are totally different in two consecutive schools. But to my surprise, this SERC school topics are not too much unrelated to those covered in the previous one. In the previous main school we had basic string theory course and in the coming one there is a course on AdS-CFT and hydrodynamics. Similarly we had cosmology and particle physics course in the previous school and there is a course on GUT and leptogenesis in the coming one. So it is very difficult to resist from applying for the coming school as it appears (to me at least) that the topics covered in the previous school may come out to be of much help while attending the coming school. The poster for the school containing the details is below(click the image to get a better view):

After attending string theory lectures by Prof Sunil Mukhi in the previous SERC school, I am really looking forward this time to attend the AdS-CFT lectures by another big shot in string theory, Prof Shiraz Minwalla. The course on GUT, leptogenesis will be an another attraction of this school since the lecturer is Goran Senjanovic from ICTP, Trieste and the tutor is Borut Bajc. These names are very familiar to me for a long time since I have been reading couple of papers written by Goran, Borut, Aulakh et al. It will be a great privilege for me to meet these three big shots in High Energy Phenomenology at the same time. I just hope I will get selected to participate in the school.

FERMI does not confirm the rise in positron fraction with energy...:(

Today I saw a paper by W. de Boer titled "Indirect Dark Matter Searches in the Light of ATIC, FERMI, EGRET and PAMELA" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2601). It is related to the Invited talk at SUSY09, the 17th International Conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions, Boston, 2009. The author gives a good comparison between the results from various experiments related to cosmic ray positron excess. I must say after looking at the FERMI results in this paper I am not that much enthusiastic about working on the dark matter interpretation of positron excess as I was when I first saw PAMELA results. The basic difference between latest FERMI data is that it does not confirm the peak in positron fraction at several hundreds GeV. The FERMI spectrum is more or less flat. The plot shown in the paper is as follows

The author has mentioned all the attempts so far for the positron excess explanation and commented that all the explanations seem correct and nobody can rule out any one of them. He has considered contribution of all such effects in the paper. I was particularly interested in dark matter interpretation of this excess which was quite interesting as well as challenging, since you need to make your particle physics model such that the proposed dark matter candidate unlike neutralinos annihilate primarily into leptons and not hadrons. Anyway as the author says we should wait for the future FERMI data which might focus more on possible dark matter link.

String Theory Video Lecture Part 4

Yesterday we had the 4th weekly session of watching the string theory video lecture by Prof Shiraz Minwalla. Unfortunately the seminar room was occupied by some people and we had to move to an another room where I could not not configure my laptop with the projector and after trying for more than half an hour we decided to watch the video in the laptop only. In this part of his lecture he talked about tachyonic states in bosonic string theory and showed how 26 space-time dimensions appear naturally for the consistency of the theory. But the ground state of the theory still remains tachyonic. The first excited becomes massless for D=26. Since the 1st excited state behaves like a vector which has D-2 components and hence transform under SO(D-2) it can not be massive which transform under SO(D-1). I was wondering if we fix N=1 (1st excited state) in the the relation $$ m^2 = \frac{2}{\alpha}[ 2N-(D-2)/12] $$ and requiring this state to be massless, arrive at D=26 how would the same value of D would make the second excited state massless. Then Prof Ramadevi cleared my doubt saying that the higher excited states are Higher dimensional representation of SO(D-2) and hence need not be massless. Then he talked about $$ N= \tilde{N} = 1 $$ where the tilde means the right moving ( in case of closed string we have both left and right moving fourier modes). This corresponds to $ 24 \times 24 $ representation of SO(24) which will give rise to a massless symmetric tensor field $G_{\mu \nu}$, a massless antisymmetric tensor field $B_{\mu \nu}$ and a scalar field $ \Phi$ called the dilaton. Thus gravity comes out automatically in closed string theory. After that he gave a brief introduction to path integrals which he will probably use in his next lecture.


Its surprising to see more voter turnout in Arunachal than Maharashtra..:)

What a surprise! Almost 72% voter turnout was recorded in Arunachal Pradesh whereas only 60% in Maharashtra during today's Assembly elections. In a state like Arunachal Pradesh where there is hardly any kind of development, or which hardly get any kind of central government attention, people seem to have more faith in the political system than a state like Maharashtra, the capital of which is also the financial capital of the whole country. As a resident of the neighbouring state Assam, I always feel that North-Eastern states like Arunachal Pradesh are completely neglected by the Central Government in terms of infrastructure,transport, education, Industry and many others. It is needless to say that Arunachal has much better potential in terms of natural resources and tourism compared to most of the states in India. People become serious about Arunachal only when China says something related to Arunachal. It is quite well known that China claims several thousand square kilometers in Arunachal to be a part of its own territory which India always keeps denying. But instead of this cold war with China over Arunachal, I believe the Government should work more for the development of this state. Specially looking at such an impressive voter turnout which reflects the fact that people have faith in the great Indian Democracy there is absolutely no reason not to work for a better Arunachal.

Dark Matter and Black Hole!!

A few days back, I was having an interesting discussion with one of my friend in a public forum known as Actaphysica http://www.actaphysica.com/ . He seemed to be an expert in Black Hole physics who opened various threads related to some interesting aspects related to black holes, hawking radiation(HR) as well as dark matter. He talked about the possibility of a black hole formed out of two unstable micro black holes. As we know the black body temperature associated with a black hole in inversely proportional to the mass squared. Thus smaller the mass is , higher is the temperature and sooner the black hole will evaporate. I had a doubt while discussing the possibility of an atom formed out of a black hole with charge -1 and mass $m_e$ which we call and eBH (electron black hole) and another with charge +1 and mass $m_p$ which we call a pBH (proton black hole). I raised the doubt saying that eBH being tiny will evaporate soon by emitting HR and hence there won't be any bound state forming between eBH and pBH. But my friend pointed out that only isolated black holes can radiate HR and finally evaporate. Thus within a bound state eBH and pBH won't be emitting HR. However if the radius of their bound state is smaller than the corresponding Schwarzchild Radius then the bound state itself can behave like a black hole and hence emit HR since the bound state is an isolated state by itself. This would be , according to him, a ground breaking result since so far people have no idea about internal substructure of black holes. One more interesting aspect of such bound state could be the relation with dark matter. If the bound state does not become a black hole then it would be a stable entity and hence can be studied from dark matter point of view. I do not know how much work is done in this direction but it seems like an interesting field to explore.

A purely supersymmetric origin of neutrino mass

Yesterday I came to know about a completely supersymmetric(SUSY) origin of tiny neutrino mass, that is, in the non-SUSY version of the model neutrino mass remains either zero or comparable to lepton/quark masses. This comes when neutrino mixes with the neutralinos in the Supersymmetric model. The neutralinos are the mass eigenstates of neutral gauginos as well as Higgsinos. Neutrinos can mix with the neutralinos only if the sneutrino field get a vacuum expectation value (vev). Diagonalizing the mixing mass matrix will give rise to a small neutrino mass by sutable adjustment of different scales. However since neutrino/sneutrino carry a lepton number whereas neutralinos do not, such mixing violate R-parity. This R-parity violation however should not lead to dangerous proton decay, but it will make the standard neutralinos decay into neutrinos. If neutralino is to be a dark matter candidate, the relic abundance will put a constraint on the R-parity violation. Thus this scenario will be tightly constrained by smallness of neutrino mass as well as dark matter relic abundance. I am trying to see if there is any other advantage of this approach, say from the point of view of recent positron excess measured by various dark matter indirect detection probes.

Quantum Foundation Lecture 3 cancelled without any email notifications...

It was really embarrassing yesterday when I was sitting in the P C Saxena Auditorium for almost 20 minutes along with 6-7 other students hoping that sooner or later the lecture will happen. But I finally gave up and went to the physics department which is ten minutes walk from the auditorium. There I saw a small notice saying that the lecture has been canceled due to health problem of Prof Roy. But there could have been a better way to communicate the message. In fact, the people who used to make the video recording of the lectures also came to the auditorium and preparing for the recording when I left the place. I have no idea how long they as well as the other 6-7 students were waiting there. At least the message could have been put in the auditorium notice board. I don't think I will be enthusiastic enough to attend the remaining lectures. May be it is better to look at the lecture slides which will be put in the department website after the lecture ends.

Quantum Foundation Lecture part 2

Today's lecture was more like a question answer session. It was natural that students will come up with many doubts after yesterday's overdose..:P. Most of the time Prof Roy had to answer very basic doubts raised by the students. He started with two comments regarding yesterday's class: Bell's inequality is fully relativistic and violation of local reality by Quantum Mechanics does not mean that information can carried from one place to another with speed more than the speed of light in vacuum. Then he gave an introduction to density matrix for pure and mixed states. Then he talked about separable pure states. These states are basically non-entangled and obeys local reality, Bell's inequality. He then talked about N-particle correlation function and how difficult it is to find out whether the N particle states are entangled or not. Since violation of local reality grows exponentially with number of particles and so does entanglement, hence it can speed-up quantum computation very efficiently. He skipped the latter half of the lecture since he ran out of time answering the doubts of the students and will probably talk about that in the next lecture which is on 12th October.

Wake Up Sid

Yesterday I watched the movie called "Wake Up Sid" released recently starring Ranbeer Kapoor and Konkona Sen Sharma. Well, I won't say it is a good movie, but an average one. The story was all about Sid, son of a famous industrialist in Bombay and Ayesha, a struggling, hard-working young lady who has come from Calcutta to Bombay in search of work. When they first met, they were just on two opposite poles. Sid was very childish, immatured whereas Ayesha was well focused on her dream of getting established in Bombay. The story basically shows the transition of Sid from a stupid boy into a self-established hard working man. It has a happy ending where Sid becomes quite matured, hard-working and independent young man to make himself upto Ayesha's mark and live together. As it is obvious by now, the story has not much depth as we expect in a movie starring Konkona. I have no idea if I would have even bothered to write about the movie if Konkona were not there...:P. But I would obviously rate this movie thousand times better than movies like KANK, another Karan Johar film. The movie reminded me of a news which I saw in Times of India few days back which said Karan Johar had to apologise for using the word "Bombay" instead of "Mumbai" in this movie. I don't see what is wrong in it, after all so many people are still used to Bombay instead of Mumbai, Victoria Terminus instead of Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus etc and Karan might have just picked up two such real persons in his movie.