Physics Commons^™

Probe Of Electroweak Interference Effects In Non-Resonant Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering, James Franklyn Dowd

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Qweak collaboration at Jefferson Lab made the first direct measurement of the proton's weak charge, Q_W^p, via a measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in elastic e ⃑p scattering with low four-momentum transfer. to meet the high-precision goals, energy-dependent electroweak radiative corrections were applied to the measured asymmetry. The γZ box, □_γZ, where a photon and a Z-boson are simultaneously exchanged, was the most problematic of these corrections. It could not be calculated through the same perturbative methods as the rest of the corrections. The □_γZ correction depends on theoretical models of the γZ interference structure functions, F_1,2^γZ, for which …

Exotic Phases In Attractive Fermions: Charge Order, Pairing, And Topological Signatures, Peter Rosenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Strongly interacting many-body systems remain a central challenge of modern physics. Recent developments in the field of ultra-cold atomic physics have opened a new window onto this enduring problem. Experimental progress has revolutionized the approach to studying many-body systems and the exotic behaviors that emerge in these systems. It is now possible to engineer and directly measure a variety of models that can capture the essential features of real materials without the added complexity of disorder, impurities, or complicated or irregular geometries. The parameters of these models can be freely tuned with tremendous precision. These experimental realizations are an ideal …

A Measurement Of Nuclear Effects In Deep Inelastic Scattering In Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions, Anne Norrick

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Neutrino-Nucleus Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) events provide a probe into the structure of nucleons within a nucleus that cannot be accessed via charged lepton-nucleus interactions. The MINERvA experiment is stationed in the Neutrinos from the Main Injector (NuMI) beam line at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. With the recent increase in average neutrino energy and the greatly increased intensity of the NuMI beam line, projected sensitivities for DIS cross section ratio analyses using MINERvA's suite of nuclear targets (C, CH, Fe and Pb) are greatly increased. an analysis of theMINERvA DIS data on carbon, iron, lead, and plastic has been conducted …

Dynamics Of Systems With Hamiltonian Monodromy, Daniel Salmon

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

A system is said to have monodromy if, when we carry the system around a closed circuit, it does not return to its initial state. The simplest example is the square-root function in the complex plane. A Hamiltonian system is said to have Hamiltonian monodromy if its fundamental action-angle loops do not return to their initial topological state at the end of a closed circuit. These changes in topology of angle loops carry through to other aspects of these systems, including the classical dynamics of families of trajectories, quantum spectra and even wavefunctions. This topological change in the evolution of …

Extensions Of The Standard Model Higgs Sector, Richard Keith Thrasher

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Standard Model is regarded as one of the most successful scientific theories, but there is compelling evidence that it is an incomplete theory of particle physics. There is currently no understanding of the observed baryon asymmetry, the nature of dark matter, and dark energy. Field theoretic considerations indicate parameters in the Standard Model are extremely fine-tuned. This suggests the existence of new physics, accessible at higher energies, to explain these seemingly unnatural tunings. to solve these puzzles, and others not addressed by the Standard Model, many extensions of the Standard Model have been proposed. It is of great importance …

Searching For A Dark Photon In The Hps Experiment, Sebouh Jacob Paul

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment at Jefferson Lab is designed to search for a hypothesized elementary particle called a dark (heavy) photon. Such a particle would behave as a mediator between dark matter and the Standard Model through a kinetic mixing with the Standard Model’s photon. The search is performed by scattering GeV-scale electrons off tungsten nuclei in a fixed target and looking for a resonance and/or displaced vertices amidst a background of radiative QED trident events. These background events are kinematically identical to the events in which dark photons are produced and decay into lepton pairs. Several other …

Proton Spin Structure From Monte Carlo Global Qcd Analyses, Jacob Ethier

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Although significant progress has been made in recent years in understanding the composition of the proton's spin from its quark and gluon constituents, a complete picture has yet to emerge. Such information is encoded in spin-dependent parton distribution functions (PDFs) that, as a consequence of being inherently nonperturbative, must be extracted through global QCD analyses of polarized lepton-nucleon and proton-proton collisions. Experiments that measure a final state hadron from these reactions are particularly useful for separating the individual quark and anti-quark polarizations, but require knowledge of parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions (FFs) to describe theoretically. In this thesis, we present a new …

First Measurements Of The Parity-Violating And Beam-Normal Single-Spin Asymmetries In Elastic Electron-Aluminum Scattering, Kurtis David Bartlett

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Qweak collaboration has made the first measurements of the elastic parity-violating and beam-normal single-spin asymmetries from the 27Al nucleus. Both are the result of ancillary measurements conducted during the Qweak experiment at Jefferson Lab. The goal of the experimental was to determine the proton's weak charge, Qp W, via a measurement of the elastic parity-violating electron-proton scattering asymmetry. During the experiment, ancillary measurements were made with different beam configurations on a separate aluminum alloy target, in an effort to directly measure the aluminum background coming from the experiment's liquid hydrogen target cell.

This dissertation discusses three primary results: the …

Applications Of Lattice Qcd To Hadronic Cp Violation, David Brantley

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Experimental tests of the Standard Model are reaching a precision in which they are probing beyond Standard Model parameter spaces. Increasingly precise experimental tests of the Standard Model (SM) require a concurrent theoretical push to provide ever more precise predictions to interpret experimental results. For example, future direct dark matter detection experiments, searches for Majorana neutrinos, and neutron electric dipole moment searches, all require a fundamental understanding of nuclear physics in the low-energy regime. Nuclear physics emerges from non-perturbative dynamics of the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, QCD, at low energies. Lattice QCD is currently our only systematically controllable …

Lattice Qcd For Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay: Short Range Operator Contributions, Henry Jose Monge Camacho

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Standard Model (SM), the fundamental theory of particle physics, very success- fully describes the world around us, and with a only a few tantalizing exceptions, all the experiments we have performed to understand the fundamental laws of nature. However, the SM accounts for only 4-5% of the matter and energy in the universe, with approxi- mately 25% composed of dark matter (DM) and the remaining 70% composed of the more mysterious dark energy. Further, the SM content of the universe is composed of an excess of matter over anti-matter of about 1 part per billion. Despite being a small …

Charge Dynamics In The Metallic And Superconducting States Of The Electron-Doped 122-Type Iron Arsenides, Zhen Xing

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Understanding charge dynamics and the origin of superconductivity in iron-based materials is one of the most important topics in condensed matter physics. Among different structures of iron-based materials, 122-type iron arsenides are of considerable interest due to their diverse phase diagrams, relatively high superconducting transition temperatures, and the availability of high quality single crystals. In this dissertation, we study temperature and frequency dependence of charge dynamics of the electron-doped 122-type iron arsenides in the metallic and superconducting states using broadband infrared spectroscopy at cryogenic temperatures. We have investigated the charge dynamics and the nature of many-body interactions in metallic La- …