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Neutron Electric Dipole Moment: Research And Development, Benjamin Barber
Neutron Electric Dipole Moment: Research And Development, Benjamin Barber
Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)
The neutron's electric dipole moment (nEDM) serves as an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics and it's various alternatives. Various models of fundamental physics allow for different magnitudes for the nEDM, and recent experiments have begun to exclude some models. Valparaiso University is part of a collaboration of institutions working on an improved experiment to measure the nEDM, to be conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the next few years. The experiment will be performed at 0.4 Kelvin, and will involve the use of magnetic fields and very large electric fields. Research at Los Alamos National …
An Event By Event Comparison Of Clustering Algorithms, Billy Pochran
An Event By Event Comparison Of Clustering Algorithms, Billy Pochran
Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)
In the effort of discerning the origin of the proton spin, the STAR detector at RHIC collide polarized protons at high energies and many particles are created. Of these, several particles are of interest, which include the neutral pion (π˚) and the photon (γ). Within the endcap calorimeter (EEMC), there is a circular configuration of 720 tiles, composed of plastic scintillator strips called the shower max detector (SMD), pre- and post-shower detectors, and towers. This setup can detect photons and other charged particles. Two algorithms, dubbed “IU” and “TSP,” have different methods of combining hits in the detectors to form …
Stability Of The Gains Of The Star Endcap Calorimeter From 2006 To 2011, Kayla Kutz
Stability Of The Gains Of The Star Endcap Calorimeter From 2006 To 2011, Kayla Kutz
Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)
The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) experiment, based at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), uses polarized-proton collisions to investigate sea quark and gluon contributions to the known proton spin. The STAR detector's Endcap Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EEMC) measures the energy of particles produced by those collisions using a lead-scintillator sampling calorimeter, consisting of several layers that include pre-shower, shower maximum, and post-shower detectors. In these detectors, the energy gains which convert a measured pulse into a particle energy measurement, have been calculated using data taken from the years, 2006, 2009 and 2011. Changes in the gains over time …
Studying The Variability Of Dying Stars, Austin Bain, Hannah Rotter, Aaron Seider
Studying The Variability Of Dying Stars, Austin Bain, Hannah Rotter, Aaron Seider
Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)
In this project, we are observing and analyzing the light variability in a class of dying stars. This involves observing then on clear nights, primarily at the Valparaiso University Observatory but also including a few nights at the SARA Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Thus far this summer we have observed for 25 nights and we observed 31 stars. Some of them we observed on every clear night and others we observed once or twice a week. We are analyzing a subset of 18 of these. We find that they have varied in light by 12 to …
Calibrating The Star Endcap Electromagnetic Calorimeter Using Pi-O’S, Benjamin Barber
Calibrating The Star Endcap Electromagnetic Calorimeter Using Pi-O’S, Benjamin Barber
Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)
The default energy calibration of the STAR EEMC (Endcap ElectroMagnetic Calorimeter) uses the energy deposition of minimally ionizing particles (MIPs). An alternate method is to use pi-0's. We are reporting a preliminary proof-of-principle calibration method using pi-0's. This method reconstructs the invariant mass of photon pairs, assumed to be resulting from pi-0 decays, using standard two-body kinematics. When many photon pairs are analyzed, a peak is expected in the resulting invariant mass distribution near the pi-0 mass. Using the measured mass of this peak, and the known mass of the pi-0, a minimization routine adjusts the detector gains to optimize …