Ramanujan’s formulae for pi has a connection to modern high energy physics

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The IISc says that the survey  shows that Ramanujan’s century-old formulae person  a hitherto hidden exertion  successful  making existent   high-energy physics calculations faster and much  tractable.

The IISc says that the survey shows that Ramanujan’s century-old formulae person a hitherto hidden exertion successful making existent high-energy physics calculations faster and much tractable. | Photo Credit: K. MURALI KUMAR

Physicists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) person recovered that axenic mathematical formulae utilized to cipher the worth of pi 100 years agone by Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan has connections to cardinal physics of contiguous – showing up successful theoretical models of percolation, turbulence, and definite aspects of achromatic holes.

The IISc, successful a release, said that successful 1914, conscionable earlier helium sailed from Madras to Cambridge, Ramanujan published a insubstantial listing 17 mathematical formulae to cipher pi. They were highly businesslike and helped compute pi faster than different methods astatine the time.

It said that adjacent with precise fewer mathematical presumption successful them, the formulae inactive yielded galore close decimal digits of pi. The formulae were truthful foundational that they signifier the ground for modern computational and mathematical techniques- adjacent the ones utilized by supercomputers- to compute digits of pi.

Chudnovsky algorithm

“Scientists person computed pi up to 200 trillion digits utilizing an algorithm called the Chudnovsky algorithm. These algorithms are really based connected Ramanujan’s work,” said Aninda Sinha, prof astatine Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) and elder writer of the caller study.

Prof. Sinha and Faizan Bhat, archetypal writer and erstwhile IISc PhD student, recovered that Ramanujan’s formulae people travel up wrong a wide people of theories called conformal tract theories, specifically wrong logarithmic conformal tract theories.

The researchers recovered that the mathematical operation underlying the starting constituent of Ramanujan’s formulae besides comes up successful the mathematics underlying these logarithmic conformal tract theories. Using this connection, they could efficiently cipher definite quantities successful these theories- ones that could perchance assistance them recognize phenomena similar turbulence oregon percolation better. This is akin to Ramanujan going from the starting constituent of his formulae and efficiently deriving pi.

Wider implications

“[In] immoderate portion of beauteous mathematics, you astir ever find that determination is simply a carnal strategy which really mirrors the mathematics. Ramanujan’s information mightiness person been precise mathematical, but without his knowledge, helium was besides studying achromatic holes, turbulence, percolation, each sorts of things,” Bhat said.

The IISc said that the survey shows that Ramanujan’s century-old formulae person a hitherto hidden exertion successful making existent high-energy physics calculations faster and much tractable.

Published - December 03, 2025 10:43 p.m. IST

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