India-based Neutrino Observatory

The government-owned India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is aimed at studying the properties and interactions of the elementary particle called neutrino. Neutrinos are neutral particles a million times lighter than the electron, and interact so weakly with matter that it is very difficult to detect them. However, these are thought to have been the very first particles to escape from the Big Bang, as at high energies, neutrinos possibly displayed much stronger interactions. Studying neutrinos can help better understand what happened in the very first moments of the Big Bang.

Currently in building stage, the INO will comprise a laboratory in a cavern in a Tamil Nadu mountain, accessed by a 2-km long tunnel, and a rock cover of about 1000 metres. This isolates the lab from other types of cosmic rays, allowing highly sensitive detectors to study neutrinos. The experiment aims to estimate the ordering of the mass of these neutrinos, i.e., understand neutrino masses from lightest to heaviest. “Our goal is to build a 51 kiloton Iron Calorimetre to detect these neutrinos,” INO project director Vivek Datar told ThePrint.

A device on display at the Vigyan Samagam in New Delhi | Photo by special arrangement

The Iron Calorimetre consists of 56 mm iron slabs and particle detectors arranged in 150 horizontal layers. “Being an underground lab it can also serve other purposes. We also intend to conduct experiments to look for dark matter. We also wish to do geophysics experiments there too,” Datar said. Apart from the search of the elusive neutrino, constructing the detector will itself prove to be a capacity building exercise for India. “We will also be making about 30,000 charged particles glass detectors. This is about four to five times the number of such detectors in the world,” said Datar.