Bedangadas Mohanty

Bedangadas Mohanty
Born 8th April 1973
Cuttack, Odisha, India
Residence India
Nationality Indian
Fields Physics
Institutions National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar
Alma mater Utkal University Bhubaneswar
Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar
Known for Experimental High Energy Physics
Notable awards S.S. Bhatnagar Award 2015
SwarnaJayanti Fellowship, 2010-11
INSA Young Scientist Medal, 2003

Bedangadas Mohanty is an Indian physicist specialising in experimental high energy physics, and is affiliated to National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2015, the highest science award in India, in the physical sciences category.[1] He has been elected as the fellow of Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi [2] from 1 January 2017.

Career

Dr. Bedangadas Mohanty completed his BSc (Physics Honors) from Ranvenshaw College, Cuttack and MSc (Physics) from Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar. After finishing his PhD from Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar in 2002, he was a DAE K.S. Krishnan Fellow and Scientific Officer at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre[3] till 2012. Meanwhile, he was a Post-Doctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2006-2007, and Spectra Physics Working Group Co-convenor of STAR Experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Facility, Brookhaven National Laboratory from 2006-2008. Later in May 2008, he was selected as the Physics Analysis Coordinator of the STAR Experiment, with the responsibility to formulate the physics goals of the experiment, regulate and lead the publication of papers, maintenance of database, information and data records etc. From 2011 to 2014, he was the Deputy Spokesperson STAR Experiment, and was involved in taking all scientific and administrative decisions regarding function of the collaboration. He was the co-founder of the Beam Energy Scan Program at RHIC to study the QCD Phase Diagram. From 2013 onward, he has been the collaboration Board Member of ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider Facility, CERN. From 2014, he has been the Editorial Board Member of ALICE at LHC, CERN.[4] He joined NISER in 2012 as an Associate Professor and is the currently Professor, Chairperson of School of Physical Sciences, and Dean Faculty Affairs, NISER.

He has contributed to the establishment of the quark-hadron transition and first direct comparison between experimental high energy heavy-ion collisions data and QCD calculations. This work is published in Science 332 (2011) 1525[5] and “Physics World” considered it among the 10 best in the year 2011.[6] His work in the STAR experiment has led to an exciting possibility of the existence of a critical point in the phase diagram of QCD. One of this work established the observable for the critical point search in the experiment, published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 (2010) 022302.[7] This is considered as a landmark work in the field. He has very successfully led the beam energy scan physics program in this direction to publish important scientific papers in Physical Review Letters related to the QCD Critical Point - Phys.Rev.Lett. 112 (2014) 032302[8] and Phys.Rev.Lett. 113 (2014) 092301.[9] He was instrumental in pushing for such a program at Quark Matter 2009, while delivering the conference summary talk titled - QCD Phase Diagram: Phase Transition, Critical Point and Fluctuations - published in Nucl.Phys. A830 (2009) 899C-907C.[10] Then through a paper in Phys.Rev.C81:024911,2010[11] demonstrated the readiness of the STAR detector and the Collider to undertake the proposed QCD critical point search and the exploration of the QCD phase diagram at RHIC.

He has made significant contribution to the discovery of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) in the laboratory. This state of matter existed in the first few microsecond old Universe. In such matter, quarks and gluons are de-confined and move freely in volumes much larger than nucleonic scales. In order to achieve such matter in the laboratory, temperatures of the order of 1012 degrees Kelvin need to be created. The quark-gluon plasma allows for studying transport properties like viscosity, thermal conductivity, opacity and diffusion co-efficient of QCD matter. Dr. Mohanty has several significant papers on signatures that experimentally confirm the existence of QGP, related to observation of strangeness enhancement in heavy-ion collisions – Phys.Lett.B 673 (2009) 183,[12] jet quenching effect - PRL 97 (2006) 152301[13] and Physics Letters B 655 (2007) 104,[14] 637 (2006) 161,[15] partonic collectivity – PRL 116 (2016) 062301;[16] PRL 99 (2007) 112301.[17]

Dr. Mohanty as the physics analysis coordinator of the STAR experiment led a team that discovered the heaviest known anti-matter nuclei the anti-alpha (consisting of two anti-protons and two anti-neutrons) in the laboratory. The discovery is published in Nature 473 (2011) 353.[18] This measurement provided the probability of production of anti-helium through nuclear interactions, thereby providing the predominant baseline for measurements carried out in space. As the physics analysis leader led a team that discovered the heaviest strange anti-matter nuclei. Normal nuclei are formed only of protons and neutrons. Hyper-nuclei are made up of proton, neutron and a hyperon. The anti-hypertrion, nuclei consists of anti-proton, anti-neutron and anti-lambda (a strange hadron). This work is published in Science 328 (2010) 58.[19] It has implications for neutron stars and also understanding of the nuclear force. To study nuclei, scientists arrange the various nuclides into a two-dimensional table of nuclides. On one axis is the number of neutrons N, and on the other is the number of protons Z. Because of the discovery of antihyperon it introduces a third axis (strangeness) and the table has become three-dimensional.

J. D. Bjorken, Frank Wilczek and collaborators have advocated the existence of Disoriented Chiral Condensates (DCC) due to chiral phase transitions in QCD matter. The possibility of producing quark-gluon plasma in high energy collisions is an exciting one, from the point of view of observing the chiral phase transition as the hot plasma expands and cools. As the system returns to its normal phase it is possible for regions of misaligned vacuum to be produced. These domains, which are analogous to misaligned domains of a ferromagnet have been named Disoriented Chiral Condensates (DCCs). DCC's are regions where the chiral field is partially aligned in a isospin direction. These domains relax back to ground state configuration by emitting pions of particular species. Towards this goal and since neutral pion readily decays to photons, Dr. Mohanty has put in several years of dedicated efforts from his side to establish the photon production in heavy-ion collisions using a detector built in India and search for the signature of the chiral phase transition (through DCC). He is the lead author of the Physical Review Letters paper on inclusive photon production in heavy-ion collisions (PRL-95 (2005) 062301[20]) using the Indian detector. His contribution to photon production and to the physics of DCC in heavy-ion collisions led to the invitation from the editorial board of Physics Reports to write a review article, published as – Phys. Rept. 414 (2005) 263[21] titled “Disoriented Chiral Condensate – Theory and Experiment”, at the young age of 30 years.

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "Brief Profile of the Awardee". Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. CSIR Human Resource Development Group, New Delhi. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  2. ↑ http://insaindia.res.in/
  3. ↑ http://home.niser.ac.in/viewfacdetail.php?e=bedanga
  4. ↑ http://home.niser.ac.in/~bedanga/duties.php
  5. ↑ http://science.sciencemag.org/content/332/6037/1525
  6. ↑ http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/dec/16/physics-world-reveals-its-top-10-breakthroughs-for-2011
  7. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.022302
  8. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.032302
  9. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.092301
  10. ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375947409007878
  11. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.81.024911
  12. ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269309002159
  13. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.152301
  14. ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026930700679X
  15. ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269306004928
  16. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.062301
  17. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.112301
  18. ↑ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/full/nature10079.html
  19. ↑ http://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5974/58
  20. ↑ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.062301
  21. ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037015730500181X
  22. ↑ http://insaindia.res.in/
  23. ↑ http://www.dst.gov.in/scientific-programmes/scientific-engineering-research/human-resource-development-and-nurturing-young-talent-swarnajayanti-fellowships-scheme
  24. ↑ https://daebrns.gov.in/brns_rp.php
  25. ↑ http://www.ias.ac.in/Fellowship/Associateship/
  26. ↑ https://daebrns.gov.in/brns_fellowship.php

External links

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