UCLA Intermediate Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics Research: Final Report

Abstract

This project covers the following research: (a) Investigations into the structure of the proton and neutron. This is done by investigating the different resonance states of nucleons with beams of tagged, polarized photons, linearly as well as circularly, incident on polarized hydrogen/deuterium targets and measuring the production of {pi}{sup 0}, 2{pi}{sup }0, 3{pi}{sup 0}, {eta} , {eta}', {omega}, etc. The principal detector is the Crystal Ball multiphoton spectrometer which has an acceptance of nearly 4 . It has been moved to the MAMI accelerator facility of the University of Mainz, Germany. We investigate the conversion of electromagnetic energy into mesonic matter and conversely. (b) We investigate the consequences of applying the "standard" symmetries of isospin, G-parity, charge conjugation, C, P, T, and chirality using rare and forbidden decays of light mesons such as the {eta} ,{eta}' and {omega}. We also investigate the consequences of these symmetries being slightly broken symmetries. We do this by studying selected meson decays using the Crystal Ball detector. (c) We determine the mass, or more precisely the mass difference of the three light quarks (which are inputs to Quantum Chromodynamics) by measuring the decay rate of specially selected {eta} and {eta}' decay modes, again we use the Crystal Ball. (d)We have started a new program to search for the 33 missing cascade baryons using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson Laboratory. Cascade resonances are very special: they have double strangeness and are quite narrow. This implies that they can be discovered by the missing mass technique in photoproduction reactions such as in {gamma}p{yields}{Xi}{sup}K{sup +}K{sup +}. The cascade program is of particular importance for the upgrade to 12 GeV of the CLAS detector and for design of the Hall D at JLab. (e) Finally, we are getting more involved in a new program to measure the hadronic matter form factor of complex nuclei, in particular the "neutron skin" of {sup 208}Pb, which is of great interest to astroparticle physics for determining the properties of neutron stars. Processes of study are coherent and noncoherent 0 photoproduction. The Crystal Ball is uniquely suited for these studies because of the large acceptance, good direction and energy resolution and it is an inclusive detector for the {pi}{sup 0} final state and exclusive for background such as 2 {pi}{sup 0}.