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 Physics at Virginia

"The Jefferson Lab Program on Inclusive and Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering"


Sebastian Kuhn , Old Dominion University
[Host: Don Crabb]
ABSTRACT:
Nucleons (protons and neutrons) play a dual role as the building blocks of atomic nuclei (which constitute nearly all of the mass visible around us) and as stable systems bound by the fundamental strong force of Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD). When studied with the most powerful microscopes (accelerators) on Earth, nucleons appear as a chaotic jumble of a nearly infinite number of “partons” (quarks, antiquarks and gluons). However, at the more moderate resolution available at Jefferson Lab, a simpler picture emerges: the quantum numbers of the nucleon are due to just three “valence” quarks which carry a large fraction of its energy-momentum, plus a few quark-antiquark pairs and gluons. One of the main research programs at Jefferson Lab is a detailed study of the distribution in space and momentum space of these partons, and their intrinsic spins. Deep inelastic scattering (DIS), where a relatively large momentum and energy is transferred from a scattered electron to the struck nucleon, is a primary tool to unravel this “medium resolution” structure of the nucleon. Additional information becomes available when one detects part of the final-state debris as well as the scattered electron (semi-inclusive DIS). In my talk, I will give some examples of experiments at Jefferson Lab that employ these tools, and explain what we can learn from them.
Colloquium
Friday, September 24, 2010
4:00 PM
Physics Building, Room 204
Note special time.
Note special room.

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