RUI: The Spin Puzzle, PHENIX, and Heavy Ions with Muhlenberg Undergraduates

RUI：旋转谜题、PHENIX 和重离子与 Muhlenberg 本科生

• 批准号: 0855762
• 负责人: Brett Fadem
• 金额: $ 15.3万
• 依托单位: Muhlenberg College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0855762&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RUI; Spin; Puzzle; PHENIX; Heavy

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Muhlenberg College faculty and students plan to pursue a research program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists around the world. The research program at Muhlenberg College has two distinct science themes. The first theme concerns the behavior of matter at very high density, corresponding to conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when a hot, dense brew of quarks and gluons existed. One goal of the RHIC program is to recreate these conditions via colliding nuclei at very high energies. The Muhlenberg group will help to characterize some of the properties of the plasma by measuring a quantity called transverse energy. It has been proposed that event-by-event fluctuations in the transverse energy could be a signal for a critical point in the phase diagram of nuclear matter.The second theme concerns the quest to understand the spin of the proton in terms of its underlying constituents of quarks and gluons. The Muhlenberg group will play an important role in an upgrade of the PHENIX detector that will more directly address this issue by detecting so-called W bosons emitted during proton-proton collisions. This collaborative activity at a national laboratory exposes students to research experiences they could not otherwise obtain at a small college. It provides students with new skills and a better understanding of the scientific enterprise, and it can help with informed career choices, whether in physics or in other areas.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。穆伦伯格学院的教职员工和学生计划在布鲁克海文国家实验室的相对论重离子对撞机（RHIC）进行一项研究项目，与世界各地的科学家合作。穆伦伯格学院的研究项目有两个截然不同的科学主题。第一个主题是关于物质在非常高密度下的行为，对应于宇宙大爆炸后不到一秒的情况，当时存在着一种由夸克和胶子组成的热而稠密的混合物。RHIC项目的一个目标是通过高能核碰撞来重现这些条件。Muhlenberg小组将通过测量一个叫做横向能量的量来帮助描述等离子体的一些特性。有人提出，横向能量的逐次波动可能是核物质相图中某个临界点的信号。第二个主题是通过夸克和胶子的基本成分来理解质子的自旋。Muhlenberg小组将在PHENIX探测器的升级中发挥重要作用，该探测器将通过探测质子-质子碰撞过程中发射的所谓W玻色子来更直接地解决这个问题。这种在国家实验室进行的合作活动使学生获得了在小型学院无法获得的研究经验。它为学生提供了新的技能和对科学事业更好的理解，它可以帮助他们做出明智的职业选择，无论是在物理学还是在其他领域。