A summer at TIFR

As you all know if you’ve been reading my blog, I spent my summer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Mumbai, as a visiting student under their Visiting Students’ Research Programme (VSRP).

I’m now back to Bangalore, with lots of time to spend blogging the proceedings of the last one month.

I somehow felt I didn’t do much work during the last one month. I computed the Jacobian of the operator that I talked about in my earlier post, and it turned out to be unity for all that hard work . But well, it was a good thing it was unity because it didn’t complicate the equations all the more! So we were able to write down the kernel for the Navier-Stokes equation. Then came the task of converting symmetries into constraints on the two-point correlation functions of the velocity field. I wrote down Ward identities, but I couldn’t solve them. Prof. Spenta gave me an ansatz to try and I didn’t have much luck with it. That apart, we ran into some interesting issues regarding anamolous scaling dimensions, which still need resolution.

But here I’m, back in Bangalore, hardly spending time on Physics. It’s just that I’m lazy to start…

Overall, I must rate VSRP as a good experience. My sleep requirement seems to have reduced drastically and I sleep deeper these days, thanks to the fact that we were baccommodated off-campus at Wadala (1 hour away from TIFR / Colaba) – which was, according to me, one of the major downsides of VSRP. The other downside, IMO, is that TIFR is a research institute, and professors don’t know what to expect from undergrad students. However, in my case, Prof. Spenta very quickly adapted to my ignorance and I patiently taught me fundamental concepts! But then, it is good exposure to the scientific community.

Life in TIFR is really comfortable. The west canteen’s awesome food is pretty well-known. Plus, work timings are very free. There are colloquia every now and then and it is really interesting to see biologists attending Physics seminars and vice versa – promoting interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. I think TIFR is the place to be in India for research, and VSRP is an ideal summer internship programme.