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PARITY VIOLATION IN THE HADRONIC WEAK INTERACTION

abstract: This thesis deals with the first measurements done with a cold neutron beam at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The experimental technique consisted of capturing polarized cold neutrons by nuclei to measure parity-violation in the angular distribution of the gamma rays following neutron capture. The measurements presented here for the nuclei Chlorine ( 35Cl) and Aluminum ( 27Al ) are part of a program with the ultimate goal of measuring the asymmetry in the angular distribution of gamma rays emitted in the capture of neutrons on protons, with a precision better than 10-8, in order to extract the weak hadronic coupling constant due to pion exchange interaction with isospin change equal with one ( hπ 1). Based on theoretical calculations asymmetry in the angular distribution of the gamma rays from neutron capture on protons has an estimated size of 5·10-8. This implies that the Al parity violation asymmetry and its uncertainty have to be known with a precision smaller than 4·10-8. The proton target is liquid Hydrogen (H2) contained in an Aluminum vessel. Results are presented for parity violation and parity-conserving asymmetries in Chlorine and Aluminum. The systematic and statistical uncertainties in the calculation of the parity-violating and parity-conserving asymmetries are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Physics 2012

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:14801
Date January 2012
ContributorsBalascuta, Septimiu (Author), Alarcon, Ricardo (Advisor), Belitsky, Andrei (Committee member), Doak, Bruce (Committee member), Comfort, Joseph (Committee member), Schmidt, Kevin (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher)
Source SetsArizona State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral Dissertation
Format218 pages
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved

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