Its 5.36 p.m. in Newport News now and I am waiting, all packed-up to go home, for Rakitha. He is doing some timing analysis of the QwAnalysis, the analysis software that is going to be used for the Qweak experiment. Timing is important and also one has to make sure that the analyzer don't crash in the middle of an important analysis. That will be a disaster!
So while I wait, I thought I should familiar my self with the art of blogging. I have had this blog for a looong time, but didn't had the time to write anything. In fact I totally forgot about it! I came across this accidentally when I was searching for a good blogging tool. : ) Makes me wonder am I that PhD'd? So anyway, here I am, trying to make up for the lost time and well trying to pass time while I wait.
Hmm where shoul I start.. ok so lets start with this Qweak thingy..
Qweak is a particle physics experiment at the Thomas Jefferson Laboratory and it aims to measure the weak charge of the proton. Obviously, many people would have heard of the electronics charge of the proton but what is this weak charge?? Well, when the proton interacts with another particle, say an electron, via the electromagnetic force, we say that the proton has some amount of electric charge that defines the magnitude of the interaction. Now there is another type of fundamental force in nature called the weak force and when a proton interacts with another particle via the weak force we say it has some amount of weak charge. Since the weak force is weak, this charge is very very small. In fact its predicted by the Standard Model (SM) of the particle physics to be close to zero. The goal of Qweak is to measure this weak charge using parity violating electron proton scattering.
Why do we want to measure something that is so small and infact is said to be almost zero? One reason is that it has never been measured experimentally and another reason is that it will be a test of the SM. The SM explains the interactions occuring between the fundamental forces and particles and as with every theoretical prediction, it is always being tested experimentally. It is one of the biggest and successfull theoretical frameworks in particle physics. Why do we want to test SM if its so successfull? As everything else in this world and universe, SM is not perfect. It has few glitches here and there and once in a looong while experimentalists will discover something like nutrino oscillations that the SM cannot explain. So physists around the world are carrying out experiments to test SM. They either use high energetic machines like the LHC to discover new particels or particles that are predicted by SM like Higgs or by they do low energetic experiments like Qweak to test SM predistions, like the value of the protons weak charge.
So with all this goals inmind, Qweak collaboration has embarked ona long journey that started on 2000 and that is going ot end in 2012. Qweak has already begun installation and I love to go down to the Hall C when ever I can and stare at the huge QTOR (Qweak Toroidal magnet) and the rest of its parts that are slowly begining to take shape in the fammiler drawings we have seen so many times.
Me and Rakitha we both work in Qweak. We joined Qweak before we started going out and we discovered that we have so much more incommon than the thesis experimenta and thesis advisors!. Our advisor, Paul and Julie, are are really good, the best advisors anyone can have and I am not just saying that. Its not like I am saying this cos they let us get away with doing nothing! no no. We do work and they do a good job of guiding us and thats what is really important to graduate students. That means I really dont have time to sit around and pore my heart out on to a blog but today the computer I was working on (Hans computer) froze cos Rakitha is doing his work on it too and I am sure the poor thing ran out of memory. So I took a break letting Rakitha have all the memory the pc can give him.
We will start commissoning on April and its going to be areally hectic time after that. Qweak will run for 2 years (2200hrs) and thats becasue we are measureing somehting that is soooo small. Our asymmetry is 0.25ppm! So we have to run longer to get good statistics. Did I mention we plan to measure the weak charge to an accuracy of 4%? Well thats how accurate we want to be and for that one trick is to run longer.
Ok Rakitha is finally done. Its 6.16p.m. and we are going home! I have shifts on PREX tommorw (the current expeiment in Hall A) and Thursday and Friday. I am looking forward to the weekend cos our Ohio friends are comming to visit us. That will be fun!!!
