A. Camsonne

Upgraded photon calorimeter with integrating readout for the Hall A Compton polarimeter at Jefferson Lab

Abstract The photon arm of the Compton polarimeter in Hall A of Jefferson Lab has been upgraded to allow for electron beam polarization measurements with better than 1% accuracy. The data acquisition (DAQ) system now includes an integrating mode, which eliminates several systematic uncertainties inherent in the original counting-DAQ setup. The photon calorimeter has been replaced with a Ce-doped Gd2SiO5 crystal, which has a bright output and fast response, and works well for measurements using the new integrating method at electron beam energies from 1 to 6xa0GeV.

Measurements of parity-violating asymmetries in electron-deuteron scattering in the nucleon resonance region.

We report on parity-violating asymmetries in the nucleon resonance region measured using inclusive inelastic scattering of 5-6 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons off an unpolarized deuterium target. These results are the first parity-violating asymmetry data in the resonance region beyond the Δ(1232). They provide a verification of quark-hadron duality-the equivalence of the quark- and hadron-based pictures of the nucleon-at the (10-15)% level in this electroweak observable, which is dominated by contributions from the nucleon electroweak γZ interference structure functions. In addition, the results provide constraints on nucleon resonance models relevant for calculating background corrections to elastic parity-violating electron scattering measurements.

Precision Measurement of the Neutron Twist-3 Matrix Element d^n_2: Probing Color Forces

Double-spin asymmetries and absolute cross sections were measured at large Bjorken xu2009u2009(0.25≤x≤0.90), in both the deep-inelastic and resonance regions, by scattering longitudinally polarized electrons at beam energies of 4.7 and 5.9 GeV from a transversely and longitudinally polarized (3)He target. In this dedicated experiment, the spin structure function g(2)((3)He) was determined with precision at large x, and the neutron twist-3 matrix element d(2)(n) was measured at ⟨Q(2)⟩ of 3.21 and 4.32u2009u2009GeV(2)/c(2), with an absolute precision of about 10(-5). Our results are found to be in agreement with lattice QCD calculations and resolve the disagreement found with previous data at ⟨Q(2)⟩=5u2009u2009GeV(2)/c(2). Combining d(2)(n) and a newly extracted twist-4 matrix element f(2)(n), the average neutron color electric and magnetic forces were extracted and found to be of opposite sign and about 30u2009u2009MeV/fm in magnitude.

Production of Highly Polarized Positrons Using Polarized Electrons at MeV Energies

The Polarized Electrons for Polarized Positrons experiment at the injector of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility has demonstrated for the first time the efficient transfer of polarization from electrons to positrons produced by the polarized bremsstrahlung radiation induced by a polarized electron beam in a high-Z target. Positron polarization up to 82% have been measured for an initial electron beam momentum of 8.19u2009u2009MeV/c, limited only by the electron beam polarization. This technique extends polarized positron capabilities from GeV to MeV electron beams, and opens access to polarized positron beam physics to a wide community.

Proton polarimeter calibration between 82 and 217 MeV

The proton analyzing power in carbon has been measured for energies of 82 to 217 MeV and proton scattering angles of 5 to 41 degrees. The measurements were carried out using polarized protons from the elastic scattering H(pol. e, pol. p) reaction and the Focal Plane Polarimeter (FPP) in Hall A of Jefferson Lab. A new parameterization of the FPP p-C analyzing power was fit to the data, which is in good agreement with previous parameterizations and provides an extension to lower energies and larger angles. The main conclusions are that all polarimeters to date give consistent measurements of the carbon analyzing power, independently of the details of their construction and that measuring on a larger angular range significantly improves the polarimeter figure of merit at low energies.

Electroexcitation of the Δ+(1232) at low momentum transfer

We report on new p(e,e′p)π∘p(e,e′p)π∘ measurements at the Δ+(1232)Δ+(1232) resonance at the low momentum transfer region, where the mesonic cloud dynamics is predicted to be dominant and rapidly changing, offering a test bed for chiral effective field theory calculations. The new data explore the Q2Q2 dependence of the resonant quadrupole amplitudes and for the first time indicate that the Electric and the Coulomb quadrupole amplitudes converge as Q2→0Q2→0. The measurements of the Coulomb quadrupole amplitude have been extended to the lowest momentum transfer ever reached, and suggest that more than half of its magnitude is attributed to the mesonic cloud in this region. The new data disagree with predictions of constituent quark models and are in reasonable agreement with dynamical calculations that include pion cloud effects, chiral effective field theory and lattice calculations. The measurements indicate that improvement is required to the theoretical calculations and provide valuable input that will allow their refinements.

Comparison of Modeled and Measured Performance of a GSO Crystal as Gamma Detector

We have modeled, tested, and installed a large, cerium-activated Gd2SiO5 crystal scintillator for use as a detector of gamma rays. We present the measured detector response to two types of incident photons: nearly monochromatic photons up to 40 MeV, and photons from a continuous Compton backscattering spectrum up to 200 MeV. Our GEANT4 simulations, developed to determine the analyzing power of the Compton polarimeter in Hall A of Jefferson Lab, reproduce the measured spectra well.

Methods for optical calibration of the BigBite hadron spectrometer

The techniques for optical calibration of Jefferson Labs large-acceptance magnetic hadron spectrometer, BigBite, have been examined. The most consistent and stable results were obtained by using a method based on singular value decomposition. In spite of the complexity of the optics, the particles positions and momenta at the target have been precisely reconstructed from the coordinates measured in the detectors by means of a single back-tracing matrix. The technique is applicable to any similar magnetic spectrometer and any particle type. For 0.55 GeV/c protons, we have established the vertex resolution of 1.2 cm, angular resolutions of 7 mrad and 16 mrad (in-plane and out-of-plane, respectively), and a relative momentum resolution of 1.6%.

Polarization observables in deuteron photodisintegration below 360 MeV

Abstract High precision measurements of induced and transferred recoil proton polarization in d ( γ → , p → ) n have been performed for photon energies of 277–357 MeV and θ cm = 20 ° – 120 ° . The measurements were motivated by a longstanding discrepancy between meson–baryon model calculations and data at higher energies. At the low energies of this experiment, theory continues to fail to reproduce the data, indicating that either something is missing in the calculations and/or there is a problem with the accuracy of the nucleon–nucleon potential being used.

A glimpse of gluons through deeply virtual compton scattering on the proton

The internal structure of nucleons (protons and neutrons) remains one of the greatest outstanding problems in modern nuclear physics. By scattering high-energy electrons off a proton we are able to resolve its fundamental constituents and probe their momenta and positions. Here we investigate the dynamics of quarks and gluons inside nucleons using deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS)—a highly virtual photon scatters off the proton, which subsequently radiates a photon. DVCS interferes with the Bethe-Heitler (BH) process, where the photon is emitted by the electron rather than the proton. We report herein the full determination of the BH-DVCS interference by exploiting the distinct energy dependences of the DVCS and BH amplitudes. In the regime where the scattering is expected to occur off a single quark, measurements show an intriguing sensitivity to gluons, the carriers of the strong interaction.It remains a challenge to find the structure and the distribution of the constituents of nucleons. Here the authors use a scattering method to get information about the gluons and quarks inside a proton and separate the contribution of Bethe-Heitler from the deeply virtual Compton scattering process.