NSF Award
1820345
Norfolk State University (NSU) participates in the study of the sub-atomic structure of matter as members of the GlueX and MesonEx (CLAS12) experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) located in Newport News, Virginia. The group researches the forces that keep the basic components of sub-atomic particles together, known as the "strong" force. They expect to identify a new form of sub-atomic particles (exotics) that can greatly contribute to the understanding of the strong force. These exotics will provide an external manifestation of the strong force that otherwise is hidden (confined inside the particles). NSU faculty and undergraduate students are developing a software infrastructure to perform the analysis of big data in a user-friendly manner. Specifically, they are exploring new statistical techniques, hardware options and software programing to help the analysis. The NSU campus is near Jefferson Lab, providing NSU students opportunities to participate in research all year around. It is a goal of this project to strengthen the national participation of undergraduate minorities in nuclear and particle physics research. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), such as NSU, have been more successful than majority institutions in retaining minority students at the undergraduate level and introducing them to graduate programs in STEM disciplines. <br/><br/>Norfolk State University is participating in the experimental study of the strong interactions by testing basic Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) using Meson Spectroscopy. This project proposes to continue the group's participation in the GlueX (Hall D) and MesonEx (Hall B) experiments at Jefferson Lab. Meson spectroscopy is of fundamental importance for the understanding of the strong interaction at intermediate energies with the goal of finding more details about QCD confinement. NSU had been involved in hardware construction and software development for both experiments and in the data analysis of previous CLAS experiments related to meson photo-production. The group proposes to continue its current involvement in the analyses and software development of meson photo-production performing full Partial Wave Analysis (PWA) of few body final states. The spectroscopy studies concentrate in channels for the study of exotics and strangeonia states. They are working to obtain more efficient, user friendly and fast analysis code for pursuing amplitude analysis. GlueX and MesonEx will obtain data with such better systematic and statistical uncertainties that the limitations of the current methods of analysis will be exposed. Therefore new refinements in analysis will be required, and a close collaboration between theorists (models) and experimentalists (software), to obtain definite results. Through this program, NSU faculty and undergraduate students will directly participate in the software development and analysis of data from experiments in the forefront of nuclear physics research. NSU is one of the leading HBCU's in the country and its main campus is conveniently located at a short distance from Jefferson Lab. The group has a continuous record of involving minorities at Jefferson Lab for the last 20 years. This project will continue to provide opportunities to under-represented minorities and strengthen diversity in nuclear physics research.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
