India is set to play a big role in its global efforts to build a sophisticated accelerator complex at Darmstadt near Frankfurt in Germany. The objective is to create exotic particles to give a better understanding of the evolution of the universe.

India will contribute about €36 million in cash/kind to what is being billed as the next mega project after the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which recently found the evidence of the existence of the Higgs Boson particle.

The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), as it will be called, will have an accelerator complex which will provide high energy, precisely tailored beams of particles accelerated and used in new experiments, designed to create new exotic particles and study the building blocks of matter. The findings are expected to throw new light on the birth of the universe.

The FAIR is blend of technology and machines. Among the other 14 countries collaborating in this multi-billion dollar project are: France, China, Germany, UK, Italy, Russia, Austria and Finland.

The Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) and the Kolkata based-Bose Institute today signed an agreement to make and supply power converters to FAIR.

The ECIL has bagged a contract of €7.5 million ( Rs 50 crore) to supply 500 of these converters. They will power the super conducting magnets that bend the high energy particle beams in the accelerator at FAIR, according to a press release.

The Bose Institute, under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), has been designated as the Indian shareholder in the FAIR company, and the nodal institute for managing the programme from India. The Secretary, DST, T. Ramasami, told newspersons at the formal agreement signing event, that an electronic mission initiative was awaiting Cabinet clearance.

The mission was give a fillip to domestic manufacturing and reduce imports of key electronic components and systems.

> somasekhar.m@thehindu.co.in

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