I am a post-doctoral research associate in the physics department at Duke University. I work in Haiyan Gao's Medium Energy Physics Group.

My research is centered on using polarized ³He to study the properties of the neutron.

Polarized ³He Program at HIGS - HIGS (High Intensity Gamma Source) is a program at the Duke Free Electron Laser Laboratory (DFELL) that uses high-energy photons to understand basic properties of nucleons and nuclei.

I am currently constructing a polarized ³He target that will be used for an initial experiment planned for the spring. It will be a study of the three-body break-up of polarized ³He.

Other experiments planned for this target are a test of the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) Sum Rule on ³He below pion threshhold and measurement of the spin-polarizablities of the neutron and ³He.

Measuring the Polarization Lifetime of Low Temperature ³He - In the upcoming neutron electric dipole moment search at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the precession of neutrons in a 1 mG magnetic field is measured using a reaction with polarized ³He.

Since the experiment takes place at very low temperatures ( < 0.1 K) it is important to understand the polarization properties of ultra-cold, low-density ³He nuclei. This requires measurements not only at low temperature and low magnetic fields, but also in liquid ⁴He and in the presence of deuterated plastic of which the experiment's container is made.

The group has constructed a double-chambered glass cell and dewar system that can be used to measure the lifetime of polarized ³He gas at 2.2 K.

Jefferson Lab E01-107 - Measurement of Pion Transparency in Nuclei - A Jefferson Lab Hall-C experiment looking for Color Transparency (CT) with pions. Electrons scattering off of protons in a nucleus scatter differently than off of hydrogen because of nuclear effects. However, if the energy is high enough scattered electrons will begin to experience color transparency and electrons scattering a large nucleus will have a similar cross-section to those scattering from a proton.
This experiment uses pions created in electron-nucleus scattering to look for this sudden change in cross-section. The first part of this experiment ran earlier this summer. The second part will be in November-December.