ALIGARH. “The results of Physics researches in the field of Neutrinos generate from the India based Neutrino Observatory would provide a significant impact in the sphere of the cutting edge scientific research”, according to Prof. Takaaki Kajita, Nobel laureate in Physics and a professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prof. Kajita was delivering his inaugural lecture at a five-day International Workshop on “The Frontiers of Electroweak Interaction of Leptons and Hadrons” organized by the Department of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University.
In his lecture, Prof. Kajita emphasized the importance of Neutrinos in day to day life and underlined the need for its production and detection. He said that the Japanese Neutrino Physics community was “eagerly looking forward to Indo-Japanese collaboration project in which a number of scientists from the Aligarh Muslim University are also involved”.
In his presidential note, AMU Vice Chancellor, Lt. Gen. Zameer Uddin Shah said that research in the field of fundamental sciences helps us to understand nature, it is designed to lead us to new discoveries and thereafter applied science uses these discoveries to give us tangible results.
Guest of Honour, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Brig. S. Ahmad Ali said that the Electroweak Interactions is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature – electromagnetism and weak interaction.
Brig. Ali said that Nobel laureates Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg won prizes for their study on the unification of the Weak and Electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. He said that trillions of Neutrinos pass through our thumb per second and we do not notice it. “The discovery by Prof. Kajita implied existence of finite neutrino masses”, he added.
The Dean, Faculty of Science Prof. Abdul Munir said that Prof. Kajita’s visit to the Department of Physics will bring the works of our faculty members to fore and they will be benefited from this workshop in a number of ways. He urged the young researchers of the department to interact with the visiting personalities and learn how to achieve noteworthy successes.
Welcoming the guests, Prof. Afzal Ansari, Chairman, Department of Physics, shed light on the history of the department and underlined the achievements of its faculties during different periods. He said that Dr. P.E. Harrison, Prof. H.B. Duncliff and Dr. Wali Mohammad, a student of Sir J.J. Thompson of Cambridge University were amongst the early teachers in this department who played an important role in developing the department to a significant centre of research in Physics. He said that the department specialized in researches in Nuclear and Particle Physics, Atomic, Molecular and Laser Spectroscopy, Cosmic Rays and Space Physics and Photonics and Non-Linear Dynamics.
Earlier, Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar, the Convener of the Workshop, who is also involved in Indo-Japanese collaboration project, told PTI that till now “importance of Neutrinos, which are a fundamental particle of all heavenly bodies, had remained a grey area”. He added that the ongoing collaboration project between the AMU and University of Tokyo would therefore play a crucial role in this frontier area of particle physics.
135 participants from around the world including 60 faculty members are attending the workshop.