MOLLER Source and Beam Control for Parity Experiments

The upcoming MOLLER experiment is designed to probe fundamental interactions with unprecedented sensitivity to discover new physics beyond the Standard Model. MOLLER is an extremely precise experiment in which a high energy electron beam will be directed at electrons contained in a liquid hydrogen target. The electrons in the beam will be polarized in one direction and then flipped 180 degrees.

By comparing the rate that electrons scatter with one polarization direction to the other, the experiment is sensitive to new particles that might exist beyond the Standard Model. This award supports research that is essential for achieving the required polarization and flipping of that polarization. A complementary research component is to develop a detailed design for the proposed COIN experiment that will investigate the strange quark content of protons.

This research program will focus on simulations with the aim of developing detailed designs for the COIN experiment. This program will educate both high school students and undergraduates in fundamental laser laboratory skills and train postdoc and graduate students to become world experts in parity experiment beam control. The PI is committed to supporting the education of future scientists and creating and sustaining a positive, inclusive, safe, and professional research and training environment.

The PI intends to support undergraduate participation in research, including an undergraduate or high school student from an underrepresented group. The PI intends to have members of the research group participate in outreach programs at IU Physics.

The aim of the upcoming MOLLER experiment at Jefferson Laboratory, a national accelerator facility, is to probe electroweak interactions with unprecedented sensitivity reach at both low and high energy scales to discover new beyond the Standard Model dynamics. MOLLER is an extremely precise parity violating electron scattering (PVES) experiment searching for new neutral currents in electron-electron scattering.

This research program is essential for the achieving parity quality beam for MOLLER to meet its stringent systematic uncertainty goals arising from beam asymmetries. The main thrust of the research in this project is electron beam control for the upcoming MOLLER experiment. This effort will involve beam studies at Jefferson Lab, polarized source efforts, and management of beam asymmetries during MOLLER Run 1.

Additional complementary efforts include efforts on the proposed COIN experiment. The COIN experiment is a proposed experiment at Jefferson Laboratory to search for a nonzero strange form factor of the proton at 2.5 (GeV/c)2 via a measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry (PVA) in elastic longitudinally polarized beam electron-proton scattering.

Research goals include devoting simulation efforts towards development of a detailed design for the proposed COIN experiment at Jefferson Laboratory to search for a nonzero strange form factor of the proton, building on expertise in parity violation to work through experimental details of the measurement.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.