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Specializing in:

Nucleon- Nucleon Interactions

3D Printing

of Nuclear Physics Equipment

University of

New Hampshire

 

Nuclear Physics Lab

Tensor Polarization Targets

Understanding the Nature of Normal Matter

The UNH Long Lab experimentally probes fundamental properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) using high-energy electron beams and spin-polarized fixed targets. 

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We are supported by the Dept. of Energy Grant DE-FG02-88ER40410.

Over the course of the past century since the discovery of the proton, much progress has been
made at understanding the fundamental forces and particles that make up normal matter. However, questions still remain:

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How do nucleons combine to form atomic nuclei?
 

What governs the transition of quarks and gluons into nucleons?


Advances in spin-polarized targets have massively improved our understanding of the internal structure of nucleons by introducing a new degree of freedom that experiments can utilize. The Long Lab follows that trend through the development and advancement of a tensor polarized target to be used at national accelerator facilities that will let us probe deeper into the remaining questions on the formation and structure of matter. We already have two approved experiments at Jefferson Lab, E12-13-011 and E12-15-005, that will probe gluonic effects, sea quark effects, exotic 6-quark states, short range correlations, and to further our understanding of how an atomic nucleus arises from it's constituent quarks and gluons.
 

The Long Lab also utilizes recent advances that have been made in DNP for medical applications. Those advances were made to improve DNP at room temperature and higher magnetic fields for use as a medical diagnostic tool, but many of the news tools created have the potential to address the technical issues of enhancing tensor polarization. These include low-cost solid-state mm-wave sources, advances in extremely low-loss and overmodal waveguides, and DNP EPR measurements.

 

In addition, the Long Lab advances additive manufacturing techniques to develop small-scale detectors of arbitrary geometry, and to improve target material cups and ladders by giving the ability to create target sticks of arbitrary geometrical complexity, which opens up freedom for novel mechanisms such as incorporating mm-wave reflectors and NMR coils that are directly integrated into the target material cups.

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