It Feels Good!

After more than one year gap, I finally met my supervisor :-) It feels great indeed, and he could recognize me as well ;) Actually this meeting was supposed to happen couple of months later, but he had to come to the institute for some emergency reasons and we end up meeting unexpectedly. For the last one year we are working on a problem, written 2-3 versions of a manuscript but still have not been able to finalize it. It's really difficult (at least for a beginner like me) to do work by just communicating through email. Let's see if something can be done in this direction during his one month stay here although I am not much hopeful about it. In the meantime I am trying to finish some of my own work which might lead to a publication if the results are correct which I have to re-check :)

The Happiest Moment!

What can be the happiest moment in a research scholar's life? Well, for me its when I get reply to my mails from my supervisor :P. Today I got reply from my supervisor after a long time regarding some calculations I have done related to gauge coupling unification in some specific models. Thank god he found them quite good. Although the unification in my calculations are still partial, effort is going on to make them perfect may be at the cost of adding some new particles. But the good thing is that the I am getting unification near $ 10^{16} $ GeV (which is allowed from proton decay constraints) with a low intermediate breaking scale of the order of TeV. This looks good as it can have some LHC signatures. Lets see how things go, I am really hopeful of some good output unlike before :)

Weekdays getting more and more hectic

The weekdays are becoming very hectic for me. After I come back to hostel at 6 pm I am left with almost zero energy. I don't know how much work I do, but staying in lab from 9 am to 6 pm seems hectic. I am currently busy with a paper on some neutrino mass mechanisms. I am using mathematica to diagonalize the mass matrices and see if the desired mass spectra are coming. For a specific choice of parameters I am able to generate the desired masses, but now I think it would be better to do some parameter space study instead of choosing some specific parameter values. I am not sure if I will be able to do such things using mathematica. In fortran, things would have been much easier I guess. I just need to do a finite number of iterations for different choice of parameters within some specific ranges, diagonalize the mass matrix and store the masses in some arrays. Then I can plot mass versus the parameters and see for which parameter space I am getting the desired mass spectra. Since I am using windows in my lappy, I may have to ask the PRL people to provide me with a computer with linux installed in it.

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

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.