Subhash Rajpoot

Professor, Elementary Particle Physics

Ph.D., Imperial College, London, England 1979
D.I.C., Imperial College, London England 1979
B.Sc., Imperial College, London, England, 1974
A.R.C.S., Imperial College, London, England, 1974

Location:
Office: Peterson Hall 2 (PH2), Room 119

California State University, Long Beach
Department of Physics & Astronomy
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840-3901

Phone: (562) 985-4847 Office
Fax: (562) 985-7924
Email: rajpoot@csulb.edu

Research Interest:
Elementary Particle Physics, Field Theory.

The four basic interactions that govern our Universe are gravity, electromagnetism, weak interactions and strong interactions. Elementary particle physics is concerned with unifying these interactions in a grand scheme. The success of the standard model of particle interactions has, to some extent, has paved the way in this direction. The standard model describes only electromagnetism, weak interactions and strong interactions and is based on the gauge structure SU(3)XSU(2)XU(1), similar to the more familiar electromagnetic interactions that are based on the gauge structure U(1). In simple language it means that the standard model has 12 vector particles while electromagnetism has only one vector particle we call the photon. Not all the 12 particles are massless like the photon. Just one parameter of the standard model, we call the weak angle Sin^2 ?_w, describes all neutrino neutral current data! The other ingredients of the standard model are the spin-half fermions we call quarks and   leptons and the spin-zero particle known as Higgs particle. Gravitational interactions, up to this day elude us. This has led to the development of esoteric concepts like supersymmetry, supergravity, superstrings and extended objects like membranes and requires one to plod into higher dimensions (we live in four dimensions we call x,y,z,t)

I was fortunate enough to work with the masters in this field. My mentor, Professor Abdus Salam, was one of the inventors of the standard model. My thesis work with him and his collaborator, Professor Pati of Maryland, provided the first complete neutral current analysis in his other model known as Left-Right symmetric electroweak interactions model . In that work I showed that once constraints from neutral currents are folded in the value of Sin^2 ?_w ? 0.23 . Experiments have established, after years of painstaking work, the value Sin^2 ?_w ? 0.22!   My other passion is grand unification. I provided the first detailed pedagogical exposition of the SO(10) model that unifies the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. The elegance of my SO(10) structure still remains to be surpassed. My other passion is CP violation and higher dimensional theories.   Admittedly, all this work is highly mathematical, but the consolation is that it is actually doable.