Professor Swain is an experimental high energy physicist with a strong interest in related theory. He is involved in three major experiments:. 1. L3 at the LEP accelerator in CERN, Geneva, Switzerland: The Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP) collides electrons and positrons (antimatter counterparts of electrons) in order to probe the structure of matter and its interactions at the highest possible energies. Using the L3 detector, the group tries to reconstruct what happens in these collisions, with a special emphasis on understanding how two seemingly disparate forces, electromagnetism and the weak interaction, can be seen as different aspects of the same thing. Much of the group's work has been centered on this physics, especially using the tau lepton, a mysterious heavy cousin of the electron, the reason for whose existence we have, as yet, not the slightest idea. 2. CMS at the LEP accelerator in CERN, Geneva, Switzerland: The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is planned to run after LEP in the early part of the next century and will extend the group's search into the nature of matter and enable them to address the fundamental question of the origin of mass, and test many theoretical ideas including supersymmetry. Involvements include software and simulation, physics studies, and research and development for the electromagnetic calorimeter readout. 3. The Pierre Auger Project: Together with colleagues from Argentina, the group has been looking at applications of high energy physics to cosmic ray astrophysics. In particular, the observation of cosmic rays of extremely high energy (far greater than that of any terrestrial accelerator) poses a great mystery, with no plausible mechanism known for their acceleration. This work is both theoretical in a general framework, and tied to the Pierre Auger Project which consists of giant observatories to be built in Argentina and Utah.
Conference Proceedings
Anisotropies in ultrahigh energy cosmic rays, Physics Faculty Publications (2004)
The present status of anisotropy studies for the highest energy cosmic rays is presented including...
Constraints on anomalous charged current couplings, tau neutrino mass and fourth generation mixing from tau leptonic branching fractions (with Maria Teresa Dova and Lucas Taylor), Physics Faculty Publications (1999)
We use recent experimental measurements of tau branching fractions to determine the weak charged current...
Unpublished Papers
Air shower simulation using GEANT4 and commodity parallel computing (with L. A. Anchordoqui, G. Cooperman, V. Grinberg, T. P. McCauley, T. Paul, S. Reucroft, and G. Alverson), Physics Faculty Publications (2000)
We present an evaluation of a simulated cosmic ray shower, based on GEANT4 and TOP-C,...
Preprints
Electric dipole moments and polarizability in the quark-diquark model of the neutron (with Y. N. Srivastava, A. Widom, and O. Panella), Physics Faculty Publications (2010)
For a bound state internal wave function respecting parity symmetry, it can be rigorously argued...
A new way to detect the Higgs (with S. Reucroft, Y. Srivastava, and A. Widom), Physics Faculty Publications (2007)
We describe a new technique to look for evidence of the Higgs mechanism. The usual...
Asymptotic infrared fractal structure of the propagator for a charged fermion (with S. Gulzari and A. Widom), Physics Faculty Publications (2006)
It is well known that the long-range nature of the Coulomb interaction makes the definition...
Entropy and area in loop quantum gravity, Physics Faculty Publications (2005)
Black hole thermodynamics suggests that the maximum entropy that can be contained in a region...
A pot of gold at the end of the cosmic "raynbow"? (with L. A. Anchordoqui, M. T. Dova, T. P. McCauley, T. Paul, and S. Reucroft), Physics Faculty Publications (2001)
We critically review the common belief that ultrahigh energy cosmic rays are protons or atomic...