From Desire to Data: How JLab’s Experimental Program Evolved Part 3: From Experimental Plans to Concrete Reality, JLab Gears Up for Research, mid-1990 through 1997

Abstract

This is the third in a three-part article describing the development of the experimental program at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, from the first dreams of incisive electromagnetic probes into the structure of the nucleus through the era in which equipment was designed and constructed and a program crafted so that the long-desired experiments could begin. These developments unfolded against the backdrop of the rise of the more bureaucratic New Big Science and the intellectual tumult that grew from increasing understanding and interest in quark-level physics. Part 3, presented here, focuses on the period from 1990 to through 1997. During this period of continued revolutionary change, laboratory personnel and would be users labored to proceed from the approved 1990 experimental equipment conceptual design report, the official blueprint for the project, to fully constructed, commissioned, operating equipment under the watchful eye of Department of Energy officials and expert reviewers. The article ends with an assessment of the actual experimental resources and results compared with the initial scientific desires that prompted the decades-long effort to bring the project to life.