After providing vital electronic gadgets to CERN involved in the search of Higgs boson or god particle, the city-based Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) is now supporting two more international research projects to find out the secrets behind the evolution of the Universe and generate electricity through nuclear fusion

By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad:  After providing vital electronic gadgets to CERN
involved in the search of Higgs boson or god particle, the city-based
Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) is now supporting two
more international research projects to find out the secrets behind
the evolution of the Universe and generate electricity through nuclear
fusion.

ECIL will formally enter into an agreement with Bose Institute to
supply power converters to the Facility for Antiproton and Ion
Research (FAIR), Germany, on Saturday. FAIR is an international
science centre at Darmstadt near Frankfurt for studying the building
blocks of matter and the evolution of the Universe. This is a highly
sophisticated accelerator complex, which will provide high-energy,
precisely tailored beams of antiprotons (the ‘antimatter’ versions of
protons with opposite electric charge) and many kinds of ions (atoms
with most of their electrons stripped away) – at unprecedented quality
and intensities.

These charged particle beams will then be accelerated and employed to
create new, often highly exotic particles in a series of parallel
experimental programmes. The FAIR facility consists of a carefully
designed configuration of interlinked machines for accelerating and
storing high-quality particle beams, and creating new particles by
colliding or bombarding the beams on targets for a wide range of
experiments.

ECIL will supply 500 ultra stable power converters worth Rs 50 crore.
They will power the super conducting magnets that bend the high-energy
particle beams.

According to an ECIL statement here on Friday, the other international
project ECIL is currently involved in is the International Nuclear
Fusion Research and Engineering Project, which is building the world's
largest and most advanced experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

ECIL is identified as the manufacturer of high voltage power supplies
for ion cyclotron as part of in-kind contribution by India.