Tejinder Virdee Quotes

“The Higgs is a very special type of particle - one we've never seen before. It has strange properties that we need to understand. This award was a complete surprise to me. It's really quite humbling and of course I'm delighted to receive it. I'm over the moon to be frank.”

Tejinder Virdee

In The Economic Times, British Indian physicist Tejinder Virdee accorded knighthood by Queen http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-06-14/news/50581680_1_particle-physics-higgs-boson-tom-kibble, The Economic Times, 14 June 2014
On getting the Knighthood

“We have a design [special characteristics of the detector] which is entirely based on a single magnet, a high field solenoid. The first thing one actually does in the design of the experiment is actually to figure out the magnetic field configuration for the measurement of muons. That then determines the rest of the design. The detector is built such that [see diagram] the first layer is within a tracker, which is all silicon.”

Tejinder Virdee

"Discovery machine; Interview with Dr. Jim Virdee," 2010

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a discovery machine. We are actually looking to make discoveries. So, I think that’s the name of the game. As the data come in, the emphasis will be on the high statistical significance of the statements that we make at the end of the programme – we are half way through the LHC programme today and so [there is] another 10-15 years to go. The name of the game is actually to retrieve all the physics that is at this special energy scale of the LHC. There is some magic, I think, about this energy scale.”

Tejinder Virdee

"Discovery machine; Interview with Dr. Jim Virdee," 2010

“The good thing about Higgs is that depending on the mass it actually manifests itself inside the detector in completely different ways. And many different ways depending on the mass, and we have to cover all the different ways and, in fact, when you have done you find that detector can do anything that the nature has in store for us. Anything.”

Tejinder Virdee

"Discovery machine; Interview with Dr. Jim Virdee," 2010