arXiv subjects

Himanshu Swami

Publications and source records attributed to Himanshu Swami.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Geometric-Chemical Distance Between Protein Surfaces

Proteins recognize, bind, and catalyze through molecular surfaces, where geometry and chemical patterning determine interaction. Comparing these surfaces requires both a geometric--chemical distance and a correspondence that relates one complete surface to another. Here we introduce IFACE (Intrinsic Field--Aligned Coupled Embedding). IFACE derives a symmetric geometric--chemical distance by optimizing a probabilistic coupling over intrinsic geometry, mean curvature, electrostatics, hydrophobicity, and hydrogen-bond propensity. The same coupling provides an explicit surface map. For molecular-dynamics conformers, IFACE distinguishes the same protein from distinct proteins more accurately than TM-distance and a Laplace--Beltrami spectral distance. A Jensen--Shannon distribution distance performs best in this binary identity test, because aggregate surface-feature distributions already identify each protein. A distance must also satisfy a global requirement: its pairwise values must place many distinct protein surfaces consistently in one space. We therefore tested IFACE across six protein families. It produces the strongest family classification and clustering among the distributional, spectral, MaSIF, and SurfaceID comparisons. The inferred maps preserve geodesic neighborhoods and transfer heme-centered pocket regions across cytochrome P450 proteins. IFACE therefore provides, from one construction, both a distance between complete protein surfaces and the local map that explains that distance.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2022

Neutrino flavor oscillations in a rotating spacetime

We study neutrino oscillations in a rotating spacetime under the weak gravity limit for the trajectories of neutrinos which are constrained in the equatorial plane. Using the asymptotic form of the Kerr metric, we show that the rotation of the gravitational source non-trivially modifies the neutrino phase. We find that the oscillation probabilities deviate significantly from the corresponding results in the Schwarzschild spacetime when neutrinos are produced near the black hole (still in the weak-gravity limit) with non-zero angular momentum and detected on the same side, i.e., the non-lensed neutrino. Moreover, for a given gravitational body and geometric parameters, there exists a distance scale for every energy scale (and vice versa), after which the rotational contribution in the neutrino phase becomes significant. Using the sun-sized gravitational body in the numerical analysis of the one-sided neutrino propagation, we show that even a small rotation of the gravitational object can significantly change the survival or appearance events of a neutrino flavor registered by the detector, which is located on the earth. These effects are expected to be prominent for cosmological/astrophysical scenarios where neutrinos travel past by many (rotating) gravitational bodies and for large distances. Thus rotational effects of all such bodies must be incorporated in analyzing oscillations data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Aspects of gravitational decoherence in neutrino lensing

We study decoherence effects in neutrino flavour oscillations in curved spacetime with particular emphasis on the lensing in a Schwarzschild geometry. Assuming Gaussian wave packets for neutrinos, we argue that the decoherence length derived from the exponential suppression of the flavour transition amplitude depends on the proper time of the geodesic connecting the events of the production and detection in general gravitational setting. In the weak gravity limit, the proper time between two events of given proper distance is smaller than that in the flat spacetime. Therefore, in presence of a Schwarzschild object, the neutrino wave packets have to travel relatively more physical distance in space to lapse the same amount of proper time before they decoher. For non-radial propagation applicable to the lensing phenomena, we show that the decoherence, in general, is sensitive to the absolute values of neutrino masses as well as the classical trajectories taken by neutrinos between the source and detector along with the spatial widths of neutrino wave packets. At distances beyond the decoherence length, the probability of neutrino flavour transition due to lensing attains a value which depends only on the leptonic mixing parameters. Hence, the observability of neutrino lensing significantly depends on these parameters and in-turn the lensing can provide useful information about them.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Signature of neutrino mass hierarchy in gravitational lensing

In flat spacetime, the vacuum neutrino flavour oscillations are known to be sensitive only to the difference between the squared masses, and not to the individual masses, of neutrinos. In this work, we show that the lensing of neutrinos induced by a gravitational source substantially modifies this standard picture and it gives rise to a novel contribution through which the oscillation probabilities also depend on the individual neutrino masses. A gravitating mass located between a source and a detector deflects the neutrinos in their journey, and at a detection point, neutrinos arriving through different paths can lead to the phenomenon of interference. The flavour transition probabilities computed in the presence of such interference depend on the individual masses of neutrinos whenever there is a non-zero path difference between the interfering neutrinos. We demonstrate this explicitly by considering an example of weak lensing induced by a Schwarzschild mass. Through the simplest two flavour case, we show that the oscillation probability in the presence of lensing is sensitive to the sign of $Δm^2 = m_2^2 -m_1^2$, for non-maximal mixing between two neutrinos, unlike in the case of standard vacuum oscillation in flat spacetime. Further, the probability itself oscillates with respect to the path difference and the frequency of such oscillations depends on the absolute mass scale $m_1$ or $m_2$. We also give results for realistic three flavour case and discuss various implications of gravitationally modified neutrino oscillations and means of observing them.

hep-ph↗