Here is a description of my active research (page is under major construction):
I am analyzing the production of single neutral pion with an incident photon on a proton target. The photon energy range spans 600 MeV to 2.4 GeV. The main objective of this analysis is to test the calculation of the incident photon flux. The pion cross sections determined from the data are compared to predictions from the SAID fits to the world's data of single pion production.
The data where taken at Hall B using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) in the fall of 1999. This study of pi0 production is necessary to give confidence in the measurement of the photon flux which will affect every cross section measurement made during this experiment. Furthermore, the pi0 results will extend the world's database up to almost 3 GeV. The SAID calculations are reliable up to approximately 1.8 GeV.
In the summer of 2001, the g8a experiment was the first measurements with linearly polarized photon beams in Hall B. A photon polarimeter would provide an independent measurement of the linear beam polarization during the experiment. This device is based on detecting the position and orientation of e+e- pair converted from the photon beam. This method is feasible with a GeV photon beam by employing silicon microstrip detectors to detect the e+e- pair.
The g8a experiment (June 1, 2001 - August 10, 2001) made the first measurements with CLAS and a linearly-polarized photon beam. My duties before and during the experiment were primarily refurbishing the Hall B photon tagger system and plateauing the tagger PMT high voltages. I also was the Run Coordinator for the last week of the data taking.
Since September 2001, I have assisted in the calibration and cooking of the data. My main jobs have consisted of studying the tagger T-counter stability, calibrating the Electromagnetic Calorimeter, and producing monitor histograms for checking the quality of the calibrations.
Recently, I have started to analyze the nuetral rho meson production in the g8a data set. Rho production is a good channel with which to learn more about poorly known baryon resonances and to search for the possible missing baryon resonances. The polarization observables from g8a and the unpolarized cross sections from the high-quality g1c data set will provide new insight into the different amplitudes contributing to the resonances. To disentangle the amplitudes, a partial-wave analysis will be made.
This experiment is a search for medium modifications of the rho-meson in nuclei. Some current theories predict that inside the nuclear medium there will be a shift of the mass and a broadenning of the width rho-meson from its vaccuum value. To find such effects, data was taken of vector meson photoproduction from many different nuclear targets (hydrogen, deuterium, carbon, tin, iron, and lead). To avoid systematic effects of nuclear final state interactions from the pion and kaon decays of the vector mesons, the rare decays to e+e- were detected. For more information, use the link above.