The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has entered into an agreement with the Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in order to advance scientific discovery in particle detector and accelerator research.
This agreement comes after a long history of winning collaborations between the two countries and would help to garner technical, scientific and engineering expertise for conducting basic R&D. The agreement was signed by Daniel Poneman, who is the US Deputy Secretary of Energy and Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, the Chairman of the DAE, during the US –India Strategic Dialogue which was held in New Delhi, the previous week.
According to the Deputy Secretary, Daniel Poneman, this agreement indicated the growing cooperation between the two nations on scientific and clean energy fronts. He mentioned that by working together they would be able to increase their collective understanding and knowledge on high-energy particles and accelerators, follow new scientific discoveries and new technologies along with shared clean energy goals.
A legal framework would be obtained with the help of this new agreement which would facilitate ongoing collaborations and also aid in launching new joint projects in nuclear and high energy physics. This would ultimately lead to newer technology innovations and discoveries in science. Its main aim is to extend the research collaborations in technology, such as superconducting radio frequency accelerators, particle detector development and heavy ion physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory of DEO, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.
In the past, accelerator R&D collaborations between the two nations have been very successful with important discoveries such as the top quark which is a basic constituent of matter and also the discovery of a new form of matter, the quark-gluon plasma.
Source: http://science.energy.gov