Separating academic identity from social identity I would like to start publishing scientific papers soon. This issue pertains to the name I will use when publishing. 

Basically, I would like to keep my personal and academic life separate and my question is "how can I do this?". 

To make it clearer why I want to do this, I'll mention that my current legal name is associated with a certain subculture which is quite unconventional. I want people searching/Googling my professional name to only be exposed to my "academic identity", and people searching for my legal name to only be exposed to my "social identity". There is nothing illegal going on. I'll give an example which is close to reality but I'll refrain from giving exact information. The example is that my "social identity" is an author of erotic novels while my "academic identity" writes papers in mathematics. That's not too far from the reality.
I would assume I am not the first one to have unconventional interests outside academia, the issue I guess is that my legal name is already tied to such an interest, which is a problem. And yes, this is quite amusing; feel free to laugh

I would be thankful for any ideas which would allow me to fulfill both my passions, despite their disharmony. 
Basically, I don't want the names to mix together when someone searches for one of them, but I still want to be able to prove that I wrote the papers (in case I want to use them when applying for a job or for grad school). Hopefully there is some way to achieve this. 
Other creative ideas to solve this issue are always welcome; maybe I am focusing too much on the name thing and there are other solutions.  

I'll wrap this up with some ideas that I had:


I could just use a pen name for my academic papers I guess. I have finished my BSc lately. Problem here is that if I later want to apply to grad school, and I want to show that I have published papers, it could be hard to prove that I have written them (will it? maybe I'll have a pen-name on the papers but prove ownership by other means? like the email address on the paper?).
I could use a different spelling of my legal name on the papers (my legal name is not in English anyway, though I graduated from an English speaking university so my BSc has my name in English). That seems like they could still be linked relatively easily though and one could potentially show up when someone Googles the other name.
I could take on a new middle name (e.g. I could use a variation of my late grandfather's name, which I would gladly do) and use that as the first name in published papers (that seems like it could potentially work).


Some more comments


My last name is very common; my first name is very uncommon
I am aware of course that if I go to grad school they'll probably Google my legal name as well, and of course people who know me personally would be aware of what I do. It would be nice to limit it to those scenarios though. 
Yes, I know I should have thought of this before linking my legal name to unconventional topics. I did not tell the whole story though and there was a reason for that.
Here are a few considerations:

Using a common name in place of a unique name will look unusual, since people who choose to publish under a variant of their name typically go in the other direction, to make it easier to identify their papers.  Everyone who learns about this will assume you either made an unwise decision about which variant to use, are trying to avoid prejudice based on your name, or are trying to disguise your identity.  In any case this change may attract attention, which is the opposite of what you want.

To separate your identities, you need to use your professional name in all professional contexts.  I.e., your university web page should use it, your colleagues should call you by this name, you should use it when you give talks or attend conferences, etc.  To have a successful academic career involving research you need to develop a scholarly reputation, and that can't happen unless everyone connects you with your publications.  That means either they connect the two identities or they know you under the name from your publications.  (In particular, it's not enough for you to be able to prove that you are the author.  In order for you to have a successful career, in the long run everyone must already know you are the author.  This is not such a big issue for graduate school applications, but it's a major factor in getting tenure.)

I wouldn't worry too much about proof of authorship.  This is not so easy to determine from the name anyway: even if you published your under full legal name, how would anyone know you weren't claiming papers that were written by someone else with the same name?  One big clue is your letters of recommendation.  If the letter writers discuss your papers, then everything will be fine.  (While if they don't discuss your papers, then that's a problem regardless of the authorship issue.)  At that point all you need to do is include a sentence in your publication list saying "My publications are under the name X."  You don't need to explain why, just to clarify the facts so nobody is confused.

Once you have started publishing, substantially changing the name you publish under is highly disruptive.  It can be done if necessary, but it may hurt your career by fragmenting your reputation, and the only way to combat this is by loudly and publicly connecting the two names.  This means you should try your best now to choose a variant of your name that you would be happy using for the rest of your career.

It's worth thinking about whether you need to do this.  In my experience, academia is tolerant of eccentricity and impressed by confidence.  If you treat this situation like it's no big deal, then I'd guess that most people will ignore it and anyone who tries to gossip about it will risk looking provincial or small-minded.  However, this of course could depend on the details of your situation.  (And there's also the issue of students: first-year university students are on average quite a bit less mature than faculty.)