Trailblazers in Physics: Bose Institute Team Wins Acclaim in 2025

The Experimental High Energy Physics (HEP) group at Bose Institute in Kolkata includes Prof. Supriya Das, Dr. Sidharth Kumar Prasad, Dr. Saikat Biswas, Post Doctoral Fellow Dr. Sanchari Thakur, and Senior Research Fellow Mr. Mintu Haldar. They recently achieved a big milestone by winning the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as part of the ALICE project at CERN.

This $3 million prize was given to many researchers from over 70 countries. These researchers are part of four big projects at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC): ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.

Bose Institute is the only independent institute under India’s Department of Science and Technology that is involved with ALICE at CERN, alongside several other Indian collaborators. ALICE examines the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), an extremely hot and dense state that existed right after the Big Bang.

Prof. Sibaji Raha, the former Director of Bose Institute, led the team in joining the ALICE project.

Prof. Kaustuv Sanyal, the Director of Bose Institute, congratulated the team, saying that this achievement is important for both the team and the Indian high energy physics community. He believes it will encourage young people to join similar projects and explore new areas of physics.

The HEP Group made key contributions to the ALICE project, including detector hardware development, simulation, physics analysis, and handling data-taking operations.

A Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD), built by the institute, was used in ALICE to detect photons. It was part of the experiment from 2008 to 2018. In 2014, Bose Institute took a leading role in running this detector at CERN. After data was collected, they handled the cleaning, calibration, and quality checks to make it ready for physics analysis. Students from various Indian institutes helped with this.

After an upgrade, ALICE now uses an advanced Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to manage high luminosity at the LHC. This device uses technology that reduces ion back flow, based on Micro-Pattern Gas Detectors (MPGD), especially Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM).

This upgraded TPC has chambers with four layers of GEM foils with different hole sizes. This technology reduces ion back flow and improves energy resolution and stability over time. Bose Institute researchers took part in this TPC upgrade.

Researchers and trainees at Bose Institute participated in ALICE’s physics programs, leading several studies and contributing to others.

ALICE Spokesperson Prof. Marco Van Leeuwen congratulated all participants, noting the scientific progress achieved through collective efforts. He stated that all authors of papers based on data until July 2024 will be acknowledged as laureates.

Other group members include Prof. Sanjay Kumar Ghosh, Dr. Rathijit Biswas, Dr. Abhi Modak, Dr. Debjani Banerjee, Dr. Prottoy Das, and Dr. Md. Asif Bhatt.

The prize money is split among ATLAS ($1 million), CMS ($1 million), ALICE ($500,000), and LHCb ($500,000), recognizing 13,508 authors from papers based on LHC Run-2 data collected between 2015 and July 2024. The breakdown includes 5,345 authors for ATLAS, 4,550 for CMS, 1,869 for ALICE, and 1,744 for LHCb.

This money will support a scholarship for PhD students, allowing selected candidates to work at CERN for up to two years while completing their PhD research.

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