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, Chennai during February 2001 with the explicit objective of bringing the experimentalists and theorists in this field together. The INO collaboration was formed during this meeting. The first formal meeting of the collaboration was held in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, during 6 and 7 September 2001 at which various subgroups were formed for studying the detector options and electronics, physics goals and simulations, and site survey.
In 2002, a document was presented to the Department of Atomic Energy,( DAE) which laid out an ambitious goal of establishing an India-based Neutrino Observatory, outlining the physics goals, possible choices for the detector and their physics. Since then many new and fast paced developments have taken place in neutrino physics. The award of the Nobel Prize in Physics( 2002) to the pioneers in neutrino physics is a measure of the importance of this field.
Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets and electrons
As a result of the support received from various research institutes, universities, the scientific community and the funding agency, the Department of Atomic Energy, a Neutrino Collaboration Group( NCG) was established to study the possibility of building an India-based Neutrino Observatory( INO). The collaboration was assigned the task of doing the feasibility studies for which funds were made available by the DAE. A memorandum of understanding( MoU) was signed by the directors of the participating institutes on August 30, 2002 to enable a smooth functioning of the NCG during the feasibility period. The NCG has the goal of creating an underground neutrino laboratory with the long-term goal of conducting decisive experiments in neutrino physics as also other experiments which require such a unique underground facility.
April, 2016