Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

About: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is a education organization based out in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Magnetization & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 7786 authors who have published 21742 publications receiving 622368 citations. The organization is also known as: TIFR.

A Strong Jet Signature in the Late-Time Lightcurve of GW170817

Abstract: We present new 0.6-10 GHz observations of the binary neutron star merger GW170817 covering the period up to 300 days post-merger, taken with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and the MeerKAT telescope. We use these data to precisely characterize the decay phase of the late-time radio light curve. We find that the temporal decay is consistent with a power-law slope of t^-2.2, and that the transition between the power-law rise and decay is relatively sharp. Such a slope cannot be produced by a quasi-isotropic (cocoon-dominated) outflow, but is instead the classic signature of a relativistic jet. This provides strong observational evidence that GW170817 produced a successful jet, and directly demonstrates the link between binary neutron star mergers and short-hard GRBs. Using simple analytical arguments, we derive constraints on the geometry and the jet opening angle of GW170817. These results are consistent with those from our companion Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) paper, reporting superluminal motion in GW170817.

Search for narrow resonances in dilepton mass spectra in pp collisions at s=7TeV

Abstract: A search for narrow, high-mass resonances decaying to electron or muon pairs has been performed using pp collision data collected at sqrt(s)=7 TeV by the CMS experiment in 2011. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of approximately 5 inverse femtobarns. The event yields observed in the signal regions are consistent with predictions of the standard model backgrounds, and upper limits on the cross section times branching fraction for a resonance decaying to dileptons are extracted from a shape analysis of the dilepton invariant mass distribution. The resulting mass limits at 95% confidence level are 2330 GeV for the Z' in the Sequential Standard Model, 2000 GeV for the superstring-inspired Z'(psi) resonance, 890 (540) GeV for the Stueckelberg extension Z'(St) with the mass parameter epsilon=0.06 (0.04), and 2140 (1810) GeV for Kaluza--Klein gravitons with the coupling parameter k/Mbar(Pl) of 0.10 (0.05). These limits are the most stringent to date.

Axions as quintessence in string theory

Abstract: We construct a model of quintessence in string theory based on the idea of axion monodromy as discussed by McAllister, Silverstein and Westphal [L. McAllister, E. Silverstein, and A. Westphal, Phys. Rev. D 82, 046003 (2010)]. In the model, the quintessence field is an axion whose shift symmetry is broken by the presence of 5-branes which are placed in highly warped throats. This gives rise to a potential for the axion field which is slowly varying, even after incorporating the effects of moduli stabilization and supersymmetry breaking. We find that the resulting time dependence in the equation of state of dark energy is potentially detectable, depending on the initial conditions. The model has many very light extra particles which live in the highly warped throats, but these are hard to detect. A signal in the rotation of the CMB polarization can also possibly arise.

A short survey on protein blocks

Abstract: Protein structures are classically described in terms of secondary structures. Even if the regular secondary structures have relevant physical meaning, their recognition from atomic coordinates has some important limitations such as uncertainties in the assignment of boundaries of helical and β-strand regions. Further, on an average about 50% of all residues are assigned to an irregular state, i.e., the coil. Thus different research teams have focused on abstracting conformation of protein backbone in the localized short stretches. Using different geometric measures, local stretches in protein structures are clustered in a chosen number of states. A prototype representative of the local structures in each cluster is generally defined. These libraries of local structures prototypes are named as "structural alphabets". We have developed a structural alphabet, named Protein Blocks, not only to approximate the protein structure, but also to predict them from sequence. Since its development, we and other teams have explored numerous new research fields using this structural alphabet. We review here some of the most interesting applications.