John Swain

Northeastern University | NEU · Department of Physics

A very general class of axially symmetric metrics in general relativity (GR) that includes rotations is used to discuss the dynamics of rotationally supported galaxies. The exact vacuum solutions of the Einstein equations for this extended Weyl class of metrics allow us to rigorously deduce the following: (i) GR rotational velocity always exceeds t...

A very general class of axially-symmetric metrics in general relativity (GR) that includes rotations is used to discuss the dynamics of rotationally-supported galaxies. The exact vacuum solutions of the Einstein equations for this extended Weyl class of metrics allow us to deduce rigorously the following: (i) GR rotational velocity always exceeds t...

All therapeutic methods dealing with coronavirus (past and present) are based on chemicals. We test for it (positive or negative) chemically and hope to cure it with a future vaccine (some complicated chemical preparation). If and when the virus mutates, another set of chemical protocols for its testing and a hunt for new chemicals as a vaccine sha...

An earlier forward and backward in time formalism developed by us to discuss non-relativistic electron diffraction is generalized to the relativistic case and here applied to photons. We show how naturally the zero-point energy emerges in the Planck black-body spectrum once symmetric in time motion—inherent in the Maxwell equations—is invoked for p...

Mesoscopic polarized negatively charged ordered water layers coating a metallic cathode can serve as a battery. On top of the water layers resides a normal phase of water and the electromotive force resides across the exclusion zone ordered water layers. Radiation incident on the ordered water layers provides the energy source which allows the batt...

This paper briefly reviews the current status of Standard Model (weak and strong nuclear) interactions induced in condensed matter systems via the excitation of collective degrees of freedom to provide the necessary energies. The central point is that a variety of low energy systems can accelerate electrons to several MeV, making it possible to pro...

Neutrinos in the cosmic ray flux with energies near 1 EeV and above are detectable with the Surface Detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. We report here on searches through Auger data from 1 January 2004 until 20 June 2013. No neutrino candidates were found, yielding a limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos that challeng...

We analyze the distribution of arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory in 10 years of operation. The data set, about three times larger than that used in earlier studies, includes arrival directions with zenith angles up to $80^\circ$, thus covering from $-90^\circ$ to $+45^\circ$ in declination....

The MoEDAL experiment at Point 8 of the LHC ring is the seventh and newest LHC experiment. It is dedicated to the search for highly-ionizing particle avatars of physics beyond the Standard Model, extending significantly the discovery horizon of the LHC. A MoEDAL discovery would have revolutionary implications for our fundamental understanding of th...

Using the data taken at the Pierre Auger Observatory between December 2004 and December 2012, we have examined the implications of the distributions of depths of atmospheric shower maximum (Xmax), using a hybrid technique, for composition and hadronic interaction models. We do this by fitting the distributions with predictions from a variety of had...

We report a study of the distributions of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of extensive air-shower profiles with energies above 10^17.8 eV as observed with the fluorescence telescopes of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The analysis method for selecting a data sample with minimal sampling bias is described in detail as well as the experimental cross-checks...

Spherical harmonic moments are well-suited for capturing anisotropy at any scale in the flux of cosmic rays. An unambiguous measurement of the full set of spherical harmonic coefficients requires full-sky coverage. This can be achieved by combining data from observatories located in both the northern and southern hemispheres. To this end, a joint a...

We describe the method devised to reconstruct inclined cosmic-ray air showers with zenith angles greater than $60^\circ$ detected with the surface array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The measured signals at the ground level are fitted to muon density distributions predicted with atmospheric cascade models to obtain the relative shower size as an...

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory provides information about the longitudinal development of the muonic component of extensive air showers. Using the timing information from the flash analog-to-digital converter traces of surface detectors far from the shower core, it is possible to reconstruct a muon production depth distr...

A flux of neutrons from an astrophysical source in the Galaxy can be detected in the Pierre Auger Observatory as an excess of cosmic-ray air showers arriving from the direction of the source. To avoid the statistical penalty for making many trials, classes of objects are tested in combinations as nine "target sets", in addition to the search for a...

Measurements of air showers made using the hybrid technique developed with the fluorescence and surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory allow a sensitive search for point sources of EeV photons anywhere in the exposed sky. A multivariate analysis reduces the background of hadronic cosmic rays. The search is sensitive to a declination band...

Newton's gravitational constant G, which determines the strength of gravitational interactions both in Newton's theory and in Einstein's General Relativity, is the least well known of all the fundamental constants. Given its importance, and with recent disparities between experimental measurements, a new approach is suggested. It is based on a pure...

Delayed luminescence, contrary to popular belief, never follows an exponential de-cay law and the way it falls o� can be an interesting, inexpensive and non-destructive probe ofboth nonliving and living systems. We discuss the basic ideas involved, deviations from expo-nential decay, new technologies for measurement, and possible applications. For...

The Selfish Goal model challenges traditional agentic models that place conscious systems at the helm of motivation. We highlight the need for ongoing supervision and intervention of automatic goals by higher-order conscious systems with examples from social cognitive affective neuroscience. We contend that interplay between automatic and superviso...

The past few years have shown a major rise in network analysis of "big data" sets in the social sciences, revealing non-obvious patterns of organization and dynamic principles. We speculate that the dependency dimension - individuality versus sociality - might offer important insights into the dynamics of neurons and neuronal ensembles. Connectomic...

We describe a new method of identifying night-time clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using infrared data from the Imager instruments on the GOES-12 and GOES-13 satellites. We compare cloud identifications resulting from our method to those obtained by the Central Laser Facility of the Auger Observatory. Using our new method we can now develo...

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest cosmic ray observatory. Our current exposure reaches nearly 40,000 km$^2$ str and provides us with an unprecedented quality data set. The performance and stability of the detectors and their enhancements are described. Data analyses have led to a number of major breakthroughs. Among these we discu...

Joint contributions of the Pierre Auger and Telescope Array Collaborations to the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2013: cross-calibration of the fluorescence telescopes, large scale anisotropies and mass composition.

Contributions of the Pierre Auger Collaboration to the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2013

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Malarg¨ue, Argentina, is designed to study the properties of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with energies above 1018 eV. It is a hybrid facility that employs a Fluorescence Detector to perform nearly calorimetric measurements of Extensive Air Shower energies. To obtain reliable calorimetric information from the FD, th...

We discuss materials which owe their stability to external fields. These include: 1) external electric or magnetic fields, and 2) quantum vacuum fluctuations in these fields induced by suitable boundary conditions (the Casimir effect). Instances of the first case include the floating water bridge and ferrofluids in magnetic fields. An example of th...

Bacteria, very old on an evolutionary scale, can live within agricultural soils wiredtogether into communities. The information content transferred through the wires is not yetentirely clear. It has recently been discovered that, younger on the evolutionary scale, E. colibacteria can live in communities with wireless communication systems. E. coli...

In this paper we shall rst describe low energy nuclear transmutation theory [LENT]and then apply it to describe how a \smart" material such as a piezoelectric rock when crushedcan induce nuclear reactions with production of neutrons which have been observed. An experimentalprogram being set up at Perugia for realizing LENT is also briey noted.

To interpret the mean depth of cosmic ray air shower maximum and its dispersion, we parametrize those two observables as functions of the �rst two moments of the lnA distribution. We examine the goodness of this simple method through simulations of test mass distributions. The application of the parameterization to Pierre Auger Observatory data all...

We derive lower bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the lack of significant clustering in the arrival directions of the highest energy events detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The density of uniformly distributed sources of equal intrinsic intensity was found to be larger than ∼ (0.06 − 5) × 10 −4 Mpc −3 a...

The observation of ultrahigh energy (UHE) neutrinos has become a priority in experimental astroparticle physics. UHE neutrinos can be detected with a variety of techniques. In particular, neutrinos can interact in the atmosphere (downward-going neutrinos) or in the Earth crust (Earth-skimming neutrinos), producing air showers that can be observed w...

A thorough search for large-scale anisotropies in the distribution of arrival directions of cosmic rays detected above 10(18) eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory is reported. For the first time, these large-scale anisotropy searches are performed as a function of both the right ascension and the declination and expressed in terms of dipole and quadr...

A thorough search for large-scale anisotropies in the distribution of arrival directions of cosmic rays detected above 10(18) eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory is presented. This search is performed as a function of both declination and right ascension in several energy ranges above 10(18) eV, and reported in terms of dipolar and quadrupolar coeff...

We describe the experimental setup and the results of RAuger, a small radio-antenna array, consisting of three fully autonomous and self-triggered radio-detection stations, installed close to the center of the Surface Detector (SD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. The setup has been designed for the detection of the electric field stre...

Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC; Results are presented from searches for the standard model Higgs in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 and 8 TeV in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the LHC, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 fb(-1) at 7 TeV and 5....

Observations of cosmic ray arrival directions made with the Pierre Auger Observatory have previously provided evidence of anisotropy at the 99% CL using the correlation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with objects drawn from the Véron-Cetty Véron catalog. In this paper we report on the use of three catalog independent methods to search fo...

The tau lepton is the heaviest known lepton and studies of its production and decay allow measurements of its couplings to the electroweak gauge bosons. In particular, sensitive tests of the idea of lepton universality are possible, with the hope that some light will be shed on not just the nature of the origin of mass, but also on why there seem t...

A search for the rare decays Bs0→μ+μ− and B0→μ+μ− is performed in pp collisions at s=7 TeV, with a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.14 fb−1, collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. In both cases, the number of events observed after all selection requirements is consistent with expectations from background and standard-...

A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons and any number of jets is presented. The data sample corresponds to 35 pb(-1) of integrated luminosity in pp collisions at root s = 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. A number of exclusive multileptonic channels are investigated and standard model ba...

This paper is a set of musings on what particles really are -- something one all too often as a particle physicist assumes is pretty well-established. The initial motivation for these thoughts comes from a question that I always ask Alberto Santoro whenever I see him which is "What exactly is a pomeron?". I argue that the concept of a particle that...

String theory, as a theory containing quantum gravity, is usually thought to require more dimensions of spacetime than the usual 3+1. Here I argue on physical grounds that needing extra dimensions for strings may well be an artefact of forcing a fixed flat background space. I also show that discrete simplicial approaches to gravity in 3+1 dimension...

We present results from a study of hadronic event structure in high energy e+e− interactions using the L3 detector at LEP. A new class of event shape distributions are measured at and above the Z boson pole for light quark (u, d, s, c) flavours. Energy flow correlations are studied for all hadronic events. Next-to-leading-log QCD calculations and Q...

A search for narrow resonances with a mass of at least 1 TeV in the dijet mass spectrum is performed using pp collisions at corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1 fb−1, collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. No resonances are observed. Upper limits at the 95% confidence level are presented on the product of the resonance cross section,...

A search for pair-production of first generation scalar leptoquarks is performed in the final state containing an electron, a neutrino, and at least two jets using proton–proton collision data at . The data were collected by the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb−1. The number of observed events is in good a...

A measurement of the angular correlations between beauty and anti-beauty hadrons (B B-bar) produced in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV at the CERN LHC is presented, probing for the first time the region of small angular separation. The B hadrons are identified by the presence of displaced secondary vertices from their decays. The...

The spectra of strange hadrons are measured in proton-proton collisions, recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC, at centre-of-mass energies of 0.9 and 7 TeV. The \( {\text{K}}_{\text{S}}^0 \), Λ, and Ξ− particles and their antiparticles are reconstructed from their decay topologies and the production rates are measured as functions of rapid...

A search for large extra spatial dimensions via virtual-graviton exchange in the diphoton channel has been carried out with the CMS detector at the LHC. No excess of events above the standard model expectations is found using a data sample collected in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 i...

Jet production in PbPb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV was studied with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the LHC, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.7mub-1. Jets are reconstructed using the energy deposited in the CMS calorimeters and studied as a function of collision cen...

A measurement of W γ and Z γ production in proton-proton collisions at s=7 TeV is presented. Results are based on a data sample recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb-1. The electron and muon decay channels of the W and Z are used. The total cross sections are measured for photon transverse ene...

A measurement of the double-differential inclusive dijet production cross section in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV is presented as a function of the dijet invariant mass and jet rapidity. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb(-1), recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC. The measurement covers the dijet mass range...

Bose–Einstein correlations of pairs of identical charged pions produced in hadronic Z decays are analyzed in terms of various parametrizations. A good description is achieved using a Lévy stable distribution in conjunction with a model where a particle’s momentum is correlated with its space–time point of production, the τ-model. Using this descrip...

A measurement of W+W- production in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV and a search for the Higgs boson are reported. The W+W- candidates are selected in events with two leptons, either electrons or muons. The measurement is performed using LHC data recorded with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb-1. The pp → W+W- cross sec...

Hadronic event shapes have been measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV, with a data sample collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 inverse picobarns. Event-shape distributions, corrected for detector response, are compared with five models of QCD multijet production.

A search for supersymmetry with R-parity conservation in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse picobarns collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The search is performed in events with jets and significant missing transverse energy, characteristic...

In the standard Aharonov-Bohm effect, the magnetic flux involved is taken to be classical and with a well-defined value. Here, we consider what happens if the magnetic flux is in a quantum mechanical superposition of two values. We find that the interference pattern in the Aharonov-Bohm effect contains information about the nature of the superposit...

A search for microscopic black hole production and decay in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been conducted by the CMS Collaboration at the LHC, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse picobarns. Events with large total transverse energy are analyzed for the presence of multiple high-energy j...

The differential cross section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons has been measured as a function of the photon transverse energy E_T-gamma in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV using data recorded by the CMS detector at the LHC. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.9 inverse picobarns. Photons are required...

A measurement of the b-hadron production cross section in proton-proton collisions at \( \sqrt {s} = 7\;{\text{TeV}} \) is presented. The dataset, corresponding to 85 nb−1, was recorded with the CMS experiment at the LHC using a low-threshold single-muon trigger. Events are selected by the presence of a muon with transverse momentum \( p_T^\mu > 6\...

The first measurement of the cross section for top-quark pair production in pp collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at center-of-mass energy s=7 TeV has been performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.1±0.3 pb-1 recorded by the CMS detector. This result utilizes the final state with two isolated, highly energeti...

Chatrchyan, S. Khachatryan, V. Sirunyan, A. M. Tumasyan, A. Adam, W. Bergauer, T. Dragicevic, M. Eroe, J. Fabjan, C. Friedl, M. Fruehwirth, R. Ghete, V. M. Hammer, J. Haensel, S. Hoch, M. Hoermann, N. Hrubec, J. Jeitler, M. Kasieczka, G. Kiesenhofer, W. Krammer, M. Liko, D. Mikulec, I. Pernicka, M. Rohringer, H. Schoefbeck, R. Strauss, J. Teisching...

The results of the first search for long-lived gluinos produced in 7 TeV pp collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider are presented. The search looks for evidence of long-lived particles that stop in the CMS detector and decay in the quiescent periods between beam crossings. In a dataset with a peak instantaneous luminosity of 10^{32} cm^{-2} s^...

Measurements of inclusive W and Z boson production cross sections in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV are presented, based on 2.9 pb-1 of data recorded by the CMS detector at the LHC. The measurements,