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 Physics at Virginia

"Tomography of the Atomic Nucleus"


Simonetta Liuti , UVA-Physics
[Host: Joe Poon]
ABSTRACT:

The history of our exploration of subatomic matter has witnessed a major breakthrough with every new probe being introduced. In the 1950’s Hofstadter and collaborators using elastic electron scattering measured for the first time the electromagnetic form factors of nucleons and nuclei and provided the first information on the nuclear spatial charge and magnetization distributions. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s, Friedman, Kendall and Taylor using Deep Inelastic Scattering of electrons off the nucleon, discovered its underlying quark structure displayed in their longitudinal momentum distributions. 

I will discuss probes at the next frontier that will allow us to access dynamically correlated distributions in both momentum and coordinate space -- the Wigner distributions -- at the femtoscale. Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering, namely a high energy lepton scattering off a nucleon target producing a high energy real photon and a small angle recoil proton, is one of such probes. I will explain how a detailed mapping of the quarks and gluons in the nucleon and nucleus in phase space, or a phase-space tomography, besides providing for the first time images of quarks and gluons spatial distributions, is essential for understanding the so far elusive nucleon mass and spin decompositions in terms of its quark and gluon components. 

Colloquium
Friday, October 20, 2017
3:30 PM
Physics Building, Room 204
Note special room.

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