NSF Award
2412846
This RUI award provides opportunities for the PI and students to work at EKU, a regional PUI university, on local and national collaborations in the field of fundamental symmetries, using neutrons to resolve scientific discrepancies of national priority. Examining precisely how long the neutron lives and how it decays can provide sensitive tests of the Standard Model (SM). The PI’s group is actively collaborating on the BL3 and Nab experiments, which aim to resolve discrepancies in measurements of the neutron lifetime and decay correlations. The scale of the BL3 and Nab experiments and their use of techniques from many subfields of physics lend itself to hands-on student participation and the development of a broad understanding of physical principles and experimental techniques, which will help prepare students for careers in STEM fields. This project will give students an extraordinary experience at a regional university, travel to national labs, experience with a larger collaboration, and help them carve out meaningful roles in the scientific workforce. Additionally, the proposed activities will recruit first generation students and students from URMs in the Appalachian region and increase their visibility through this work. <br/><br/>Examining the weak interaction through low energy, precision measurements in neutron beta decay can probe the mixing of quarks in the weak interaction, additional forms the weak interaction may take on, and some forms of supersymmetry. In addition to being the cleanest theoretical description of beta decay, neutron beta decay inherently offers multiple ways to evaluate the unitarity of the quark mixing matrix (CKM matrix), which allows for multiple independent checks for beyond SM physics. To test this symmetry with the neutron, a combination of a measurement of the ratio of the axial-vector to vector coupling, λ, in the electroweak interaction and the neutron lifetime is required. Currently, measurements of λ and the neutron lifetime using different methods are in conflict with each other and resolving these discrepancies is of high intellectual priority. Resolving these problems are priorities in nuclear science with implications in the interplay of cosmology and particle physics. This award will increase the PI’s leadership roles in these experiments and include the following student-centered projects: continuing fast scintillation development for systematic studies in Nab, developing complex Monte Carlo simulations for systematic studies in the BL3 and Nab experiments, digitizer and DAQ development for BL3, and carrying out the last phase of the Nab magnetometry measurements.<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.
