Selected problems in nuclear/high energy physics: Experimental hypernuclear physics, muon rare decay, and development of new detector system applicable to nuclear/high energy physics experiments. Final close-out report, June 1, 1994--May 31, 1997

Abstract

Under this DOE funding, the experimental program described in this report now consists of two major approved experiments at Jlab: Investigation of the Spin Dependence of the Effective AN interaction in p Shell (E89-009) which is tentatively scheduled to be completed in the fall of 1999 and Direct measurement of the Lifetime of the Heavy {Lambda}-Hypernuclei at CEBAF (E95-002) which will be run in parasitic mode with E89-009. Also, a new experiment (E97-008) which attempts a directly observation of the spin-orbital splitting in the higher orbits with medium heavy targets was proposed and conditionally approved by Jlab PAC-12 in 1997. The condition for this experiment is simply to run E89-009 first and study the best possible energy resolution. The experimental group at Hampton University has played a leadership role in the development and preparation of these experiments. The Principal Investigator (PI) of this grant is spokesperson and acting program coordinator for all three experiments. Establishment of Jlab experiments is the group`s main focus. In addition as originally proposed in the grant proposal, the group also contributed in completing the MEGA experiment at LAMPF. The detector development program established in the NuHEP Center has successfully constructed a large active area Lucite detector which uses a total internal reflection technique as a part of the kaon identification system for the Jlab Hall C SOS spectrometer. Its application in the first two experiments using the (e,e`K) reaction, E91-16 and E93-18 in 1996, has proved its effectiveness to reject the proton background both on-line and off-line. The author continued the program to develop new techniques and equipment associated with the Jlab experiments and possible future experiments at different national laboratories. This new work included developing: (1) a fission fragment detector with excellent timing and position resolution for the lifetime measurement of heavy hypernuclei and (2) new spectrometer systems for strangeness S = {minus}1 or {minus}2 hypernuclear programs at either hadronic facilities such as BNL and KEK (or JHF-50 the new Japanese 50 GeV proton accelerator) or electron facility (mainly CEBAF). The fission chamber has been built and tested by source in lab and it is now under beam test. The optical design of the S2S spectrometer was presented in AGS-2000 Workshop (1996) and recently in JHF98 International Conference.