Paul Howard Frampton is an English theoretical physicist who works in particle theory and cosmology. From 1996 until 2014, he was the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a well-publicized hiatus involving being victimized by a romance scam, convicted of drug smuggling in Argentina, and fired by UNC (in which he won a lawsuit for wrongful termination), he later became affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Salento, in Italy.[1][2][3]
Paul Frampton | |
|---|---|
 Frampton in 2020 | |
| Born | Kidderminster, England |
| Alma mater | Oxford University |
| Known for | Bilepton |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Particle theory |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | J.C. Taylor |
Early life
editBorn in Kidderminster, England, Frampton attended King Charles I School from 1954–1962 and then Brasenose College, Oxford from 1962–1968. He received the degrees of BA (double first) in 1965, MA, DPhil in 1968 and DSc in 1984, all from the University of Oxford.
Career
editHe is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990) and the American Physical Society (1981). In 1987 he was the project director for siting the Superconducting Supercollider, in North Carolina. A Festschrift was published for his 60th birthday in 2003.[4]
His DPhil thesis analyzed the relationship between current algebra and superconvergence sum rules, and contained a 1967 sum rule. In 1970, he analyzed the absence of ghosts in the dual resonance model.
Three examples of his model building are the chiral color model, in 1987, which predicts axigluons; the 331 model, in 1992, which can explain the number of quark-lepton generations, and predicts bileptons; his proposal, in 1995, of the binary tetrahedral group as a flavor symmetry. All three serve as targets of opportunity for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2002, he built a model relating matter–antimatter asymmetry in the early universe to measurements possible on Earth. In 2015, he showed that the 331-model predicts long-lived quarks accessible to Run 2 of the LHC.
In formal directions, three examples are that he calculated, in 1976, the rate of vacuum decay in quantum field theory; in 1982, he analyzed ten-dimensional gauge field theory, and its hexagon anomaly, precursor to the first superstring revolution; in 1988, he constructed the Lagrangian which describes the dynamics of the p-adic string.
For cosmology, two examples are, in 2007, he built a cyclic model which can solve a 75-year-old entropy problem; in 2010, he discussed how dark energy may be better understood by studying temperature and entropy. In 2015, he demonstrated how cyclic entropy can lead to flat geometry without an inflationary era and estimated the time until contraction to be close to one hundred times the present age of the universe. In 2015 he also proposed a novel theory of dark matter, where the dark matter constituents are primordial black holes with many solar masses.[5]
In 2022, he published the idea that the accelerated cosmologicial expansion is caused by Coulomb repulsion between like-sign electrically-charged Primordial Extremely Massive Black Holes (PEMBHs).[6]
Drug smuggling conviction
editIn January 2012, Frampton was arrested at the Buenos Aires airport after checking in a bag containing 2 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the lining. That November, Frampton was convicted of drug smuggling in Argentina and was sentenced to four years and eight months in detention.[7] He said that he was a victim of a romance scam, and that he was tricked into transporting the suitcase.[8] While in prison, Frampton was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder by a forensic psychologist hired by his legal team, a condition which Frampton says makes him gullible and more susceptible to such a scam.[9]
Soon after his arrest, his pay was stopped and he was placed on personal leave. The move was widely criticized by the academic community.[10][11] He was fired from his UNC post in 2014. On 16 June 2015, an appeals court in North Carolina unanimously ruled that his university violated its own policies by placing Frampton on unpaid leave while he awaited trial, and ordered the university to restore Frampton's back salary and benefits.[11] Frampton's account of these events was published in 2014.[12]
Under Argentine law, a foreign national can be released from prison and deported after serving half of his sentence. Frampton was granted such release and returned to England in 2015, agreeing never to return to Argentina.[13]
Subsequent work
editSince his return to England, Frampton has continued to author physics papers. These include A new direction for dark matter research: intermediate-mass compact halo objects (2016),[14] Exploring scalar and vector bileptons at the LHC in a 331 model (2018),[15] and Electromagnetic accelerating universe (2022).[16]
In 2023, he expanded the explanation of this novel cosmological model and showed the internal consistency when there is no dark energy but only charged dark matter.[17]
Publications
editFrampton's first publication was Chirality Commutator and Vector Mesons, in 1967. He has published over 500 articles on particle theory and cosmology.[citation needed] He was the author of a book[18] on string theory, in 1974 (2nd edition, 1986), when it was still named the dual resonance model. In 1986, he published a book[19] on quantum field theory (2nd edition 2000, 3rd edition 2008). A book[20] on cyclic cosmology, for the general public, was published in 2009. A book on the history of particle theory was published in 2020.[21]
References
edit- ^ "Paul Frampton Home Page – Paul Frampton".
- ^ "Researchgate references Paul Frampton, Univ. of Salento".
- ^ https://www.unisalento.it/documents/20152/868015/Tornabene+Collocation+in+the+100000+Top+Scientists+List+2020.pdf/0d4facbd-baa7-8bb2-71d1-4159c36eb30c?version=1.0&download=true [bare URL]
- ^ Curtright, T.; Mintz, S.; Perlmutter, A. (2004). "La Belle Epoque of High Energy Physics and Cosmology". World Scientific Publishing Company. Archived from the original on 9 December 2014.
- ^ Frampton, Paul H.; Kawasaki, Masahiro; Takahashi, Fuminobu; Yanagida, Tsutomu T. (22 April 2010). "Primordial Black Holes as All Dark Matter". Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2010 (4): 023. arXiv:1001.2308. Bibcode:2010JCAP...04..023F. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2010/04/023. S2CID 119256778.
- ^ Frampton, Paul H. (2022). "Electromagnetic Accelerating Universe". Physics Letters B. 835: 137480. arXiv:2210.10632. Bibcode:2022PhLB..83537480F. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137480. S2CID 252891805.
- ^ Banks, Michael (22 November 2012). "Paul Frampton hit by 56-month drugs sentence". Physics World. Institute of Physics. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ^ Swann, Maxine (8 March 2013). "The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble". New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
- ^ Price, Jay (7 June 2012). "Professor accused of smuggling drugs says he has personality disorder". Standard-Examiner. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
- ^ Price, Jay (23 October 2012). "UNC professor Frampton asks for raise from Argentina jail". McClatchy D.C. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
- ^ a b Blythe, Anne (16 June 2015). "UNC Physics Professor jailed in Argentina wins back pay". Raleigh News & Observer. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
- ^ Frampton, Paul (2014). Tricked!: The story of an internet scam. ASIN B00RBVDAD0.
- ^ Blythe, Anne (16 June 2015). "UNC physics professor jailed in Argentina wins back pay". The News & Observer. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ Chapline, George F.; Frampton, Paul H. (21 November 2016). "A new direction for dark matter research: intermediate-mass compact halo objects". Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2016 (11): 042. arXiv:1608.04297. Bibcode:2016JCAP...11..042C. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2016/11/042. S2CID 119298498.
- ^ Corcella, Gennaro; Corianò, Claudio; Costantini, Antonio; Frampton, Paul H. (October 2018). "Exploring scalar and vector bileptons at the LHC in a 331 model". Physics Letters B. 785: 73–83. arXiv:1806.04536. Bibcode:2018PhLB..785...73C. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2018.08.015. S2CID 119504001.
- ^ Frampton, Paul H. (December 2022). "Electromagnetic accelerating universe". Physics Letters B. 835: 137480. arXiv:2210.10632. Bibcode:2022PhLB..83537480F. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137480. S2CID 252891805.
- ^ Frampton, Paul H. (2023). "A Model of Dark Matter and Energy". Modern Physics Letters A. 38 (5): 2350032. arXiv:2301.10719. Bibcode:2023MPLA...3850032F. doi:10.1142/S0217732323500323. S2CID 256231073.
- ^ Frampton, P.H. (1974). Dual Resonance Models. Frontiers in Physics, W. A. Benjamin. ISBN 978-0-8053-2581-2.
- ^ Frampton, P.H. (1986). Gauge field theories. Frontiers in Physics, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-471-34783-5.
- ^ Frampton, P.H. (2009). Did Time Begin? Will Time End?: Maybe the Big Bang never occurred. World Scientific Publishing Company. ISBN 978-981-4280-58-7.
- ^ P.H. Frampton, J.E.Kim (2020). History of Particle Theory. World Scientific Publishing Company. ISBN 9789811224652.