The Parity Violating Electron Scattering Program of Louisiana Tech University

A central goal of subatomic physics is to understand comprehensively the basic "building blocks" of matter and how they interact. Since its formulation nearly five decades ago, the “Standard Model” of nuclear and particle physics has been remarkably successful and allows us to describe many physical phenomena. It is known, however, to be incomplete, and there are compelling reasons why the Standard Model should eventually break down and fail to describe some properties of matter.

Precise measurements using electron accelerators present an opportunity to test the Standard Model and to search for new physics. The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, Virginia is currently the world's leading laboratory enabling precise tests of the Standard Model through electron scattering experiments.

This project will support an effort to determine precisely the weak charge of the electron by using a large collaborative experiment, known as MOLLER, to perform two novel experiments to understand quark-antiquark pairs that are part of the proton's virtual "sea quarks" and also how nucleons behave within the nucleus.

Louisiana Tech University is located in a rural area of Northern Louisiana. In recent years, all of the surrounding universities have eliminated their physics departments, leaving the Louisiana Tech program as the only physics undergraduate or graduate program available in Northern Louisiana. The group’s commitment to the involvement of undergraduates in research is vital for the physics program.

The NSF funding will enable underrepresented groups from several disciplines, science teachers, and high school students to participate in forefront nuclear physics research. The Louisiana Tech University nuclear physics group will collaborate with other US and International groups to design, build, and commission parity-violating electron scattering experiments.

The main goals of the group’s work will be to design and develop two charge particle detection systems, design an electron detector for a polarimeter, design radiation shielding measures, and develop a theoretical interpretation of the electron scattering experiments. In addition, the group will finish publishing the results from a prior electron scattering experiment at Jefferson Lab.

The group will contribute to the MOLLER experiment two newly proposed experiments as spokespersons, and the Qweak experiment.

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.