Pran Nath

Infobox Scientist


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name = Pran Nath
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birth_date = 1939
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residence = USA
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field = Particle physics
work_institutions = Northeastern University
alma_mater = University of Delhi (1958),Stanford University (1964)
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known_for = supergravity
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prizes = Alexander von Humboldt Prize
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Pran Nath is a theoretical physicist working at Northeastern University, with research focus in elementary particle physics. He holds a Matthews Distinguished University Professor chair.

Research

His main area of research is in the fields of supergravity and particle physics beyond the standard model. He is one of the originators of the first supergravity theory in 1975 [P. Nath and R. Arnowitt, “Generalized Supergauge Symmetry As A New Framework For Unified Gauge Theories,” Phys. Lett. B 56, 177 (1975).] [R. Arnowitt, P. Nath and B. Zumino, “Superfield Densities And Action Principle In Curved Superspace,” Phys. Lett. B 56, 81 (1975).] . In 1982 in collaboration with Richard Arnowitt and Ali Hani Chamseddine, he developed the field of Applied Supergravity [P. Nath, R. Arnowitt and A. H. Chamseddine, “Applied N=1 Supergravity,” Trieste Particle Phys.1983:1.] and the supergravity grand unification [A. H. Chamseddine, R. Arnowitt and P. Nath, “Locally Supersymmetric Grand Unification,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 49 (1982) 970.] popularly known as SUGRA or mSUGRA model for gravity mediated breaking of supersymmetry. SUGRA models, and specifically mSUGRA, are currently the leading candidates for discovery at the Fermilab Tevatron and at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). He has contributed to further development of the field through studies of CP violation [P. Nath, “CP Violation via electroweak gauginos and the electric dipole moment of the electron,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 66 (1991) 2565.] [T. Ibrahim and P. Nath, “The neutron and the lepton EDMs in MSSM, large CP violating phases, and the cancellation mechanism,” Phys. Rev. D 58, 111301 (1998).] , predictions on muon anomalous moment gμ − 2 ahead of experiment [T. C. Yuan, R. Arnowitt, A. H. Chamseddine and P. Nath, “Supersymmetric Electroweak Effects On G-2 (Mu),” Z. Phys. C 26, 407 (1984).] ,supersymmetric dark matter [U. Chattopadhyay, A. Corsetti and P. Nath, “WMAP constraints, SUSY dark matter and implications for the direct detection of SUSY,” Phys. Rev. D 68, 035005 (2003)] , discovery of the hyperbolic branch of radiative breaking of the electroweak symmetry [K. L. Chan, U. Chattopadhyay and P. Nath, “Naturalness, weak scale supersymmetry and the prospect for the observation of supersymmetry at the Tevatron and at the LHC,” Phys. Rev. D 58, 096004 (1998).] , and detection of supersymmetric signal at colliders via the so called trileptonic signal [P. Nath and R. Arnowitt, “Supersymmetric Signals at the Tevatron,” Mod. Phys. Lett. A 2 (1987) 331.] . He has also made contribution to studies on stability of the proton in unified models [P. Nath, A. H. Chamseddine and R. Arnowitt, “Nucleon Decay In Supergravity Unified Theories,” Phys. Rev. D 32, 2348 (1985).] . His early work concerns the invention of effective Lagrangian method, the first current algebra analysis of pion-pion scattering [R. Arnowitt, M. H. Friedman, P. Nath and R. Suitor, “Application of hard-pion four-point functions to pion pion scattering,” Phys. Rev. 175 (1968) 1820.] and solution to the notorious U(1) problem [P. Nath and R. Arnowitt, “The U(1) Problem: Current Algebra And The Theta Vacuum,” Phys. Rev. D 23, 473 (1981).] . His recent work has focused SO(10) grand unification [ P. Nath and R. M. Syed, “Analysis of couplings with large tensor representations in SO(2N) and proton decay,” Phys. Lett. B 506, 68 (2001)] , and on the Stueckelberg extensions of the Standard Model [B. Kors and P. Nath, “A Stueckelberg extension of the standard model,” Phys. Lett. B 586, 366 (2004).] [D. Feldman, Z. Liu and P. Nath, “Probing a very narrow Z’ boson with CDF and D0 data,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 021801 (2006).] . In 1999 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for ”basic contributions in supersymmetry and supergravity”.

Life and career

He was born in West Punjab, British India in 1939. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Science at the University of Delhi in 1958, and his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 1964. He taught at the University of California, at Riverside 1964-65, and was Andrew Mellon Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh from 1965-66. Since 1966 he has been at Northeastern University. He has held visiting positions at TIFR, Mumbai under the United Nations Development Program, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at Bonn, CERN, Heidelberg and Munich. He was co-chair of the conference "Gauge Theories and Modern Field Theory", in 1975, and founding chair in 1990 of the annual PASCOS symposium (Particle physics, String theory and Cosmology), and also the founding chair in 1993 of the annual conference SUSY. In 2004 PASCOS symposium held a special Pran Nath Festschrift honouring his ”pioneering contributions over four decades in the fields of high energy theory, supersymmetry, supergravity, and unification” [G. Alverson and M. T. Vaughn, “Themes In Unification”, The Pran Nath Festschrift, Boston, USA, August 18-19, 2004.http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/5873.html] [ [http://www.pascos04.neu.edu/Site/PranNath.htm PASCOS 2004 Symposium and Pran Nath Fest ] ] . A full list of his publications can be seen here [ [http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+A+NATH Spires-Hep: Find A Nath ] ] International conference SUGRA20. An international conference was held at NortheasternUniversity March 17-20, 2003 celebrating 20 years since the invention of SUGRAunified model of which he was a co-author [P. Nath, “Search for SUSY and unification”, Proceedings, International Conference, 20 years of SUGRA, SUGRA20, Boston, USA, March 17-21, 2003”.3 http://www.sugra20.neu.edu/] .

References and Notes

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