International collaboration of physicists achieves first successful laser cooled Positronium
Why in news?
- For the first time, an international collaboration of researchers has successfully demonstrated the laser cooling of Positronium, a short-lived hydrogen-like atom that provides an ideal testing ground for bound-state quantum electrodynamics.
Details:
- The Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy (AEgIS) collaboration has performed complex experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in order to obtain this breakthrough.
- The results could pave the way for taking up advanced studies leading to improved understanding of the physical nature, comprising matter and antimatter facilitated through the interactions between light and charged matter.
Positronium:
- Positronium is a fundamental atom that comprises an electron (e-) and a positron (e+). Electrons and positrons are leptons, and they interact through electromagnetic and weak forces.
- A usual atom is made up of a mixture of baryons and leptons. Since Positronium is only made up of electrons and positrons, and no usual nuclear matter, it has the unique distinction of being a purely leptonic atom.
Laser cooling of Positronium:
- Even though this field has been under active research since the late 1980s, several technological innovations and manufacturing of cutting-edge lasers finally facilitated the laser cooling of Positronium.
- The laser cooling of Positronium atoms achieved from ~380 Kelvin (106.85 degrees Celsius) to ~170 Kelvin (minus 103.15 degrees Celsius), using a 70-nanosecond pulsed alexandrite-based laser system.
- The experiment was done under the very challenging circumstances of an accelerator beam hall, rather than within the confines of a very well controlled laboratory.
- Laser cooling anti-atoms and their spectroscopic comparison is a critical and vital test for the Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED).
Way Forward:
- This now opens doors to creating exotic many particle systems like the Bose Einstein Condensates of this unique system.
- This is an important precursor experiment to the formation of anti-Hydrogen in the AEgIS experiment, which has a long-standing goal to test the equivalence principle.
Govt. launches project aimed at anaemia control in girls
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Why in news?
- Ministry of Ayush and Ministry of Women and Child Development have signed a MoU for the nutritional improvement in adolescent girls through Ayurveda Interventions.
- It is a Joint Public Health Initiative for “Anaemia Control among adolescent girls using Ayurveda interventions in the five districts under Mission Utkarsh”.
Key Highlights:
- Both the Ministries have jointly decided that in the first phase, the focus may be given to improve the anaemic status of adolescent girls (14-18 years) in five aspirational districts of five states namely Assam–Dhubri; Chhattisgarh- Bastar; Jharkhand – Paschimi Singhbhum; Maharashtra – Gadchiroli; Rajasthan – Dhaulpur.
- The Ministry of Ayush and Ministry of Women and Child Development have entered into this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the aim of nutritional improvement of approximately 95,000 adolescent girls in the Anaemia prone districts (where average prevalence of anaemia is approximately 69.5 %) today.
- This project will cover approximately 10,000 Anganwadi Centres in the five districts.
- Under Mission Utkarsh, 15 central ministries or departments will work to elevate districts at the bottom, to State and national averages.
Way Forward:
- Focusing the girls between 14 to 18 years of age group is important because when they get married after 18 years they can give birth to healthy children in future.
