Author

Gary Hollis

Date of Award

Fall 2020

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Ralf Gothe

Abstract

Electron scattering cross-sections for two different reaction channels, e- + p→ e- + n + ϖ + and e- + n → e- + p ϖ - using an unpolarized deuterium target, were extracted from Jefferson Lab experiment E1E data with a beam energy of 2.039 GeV, providing a (W;Q2) coverage of 1.1 GeV < W < 1.9 GeV and0.4 GeV2< Q2 2. Although there has already been an analysis of this same data set for the second reaction channel listed above [1], more of the cross-section domain has been covered in this analysis due to applying a new technique called Fermi-unsmearing. Fermi-smearing is a distortion in a cross-section measurement which occurs whenever the target is erroneously assumed to be at rest but is in fact a bound nucleon as part of a larger nucleus (and thus is in Fermi-motion). Fermi-unsmearing is a Monte Carlo method presented in this work for generating a correction factor that removes the Fermi-smearing effect from an existing cross-section measurement that suffers from Fermi-smearing. Using Fermi-unsmearing can have the advantage of significantly larger statistical sample sizes given the same data set due to allowing less strict final data selection criteria, as occurs in a Fermi-unsmeared analysis of the e- + n→ e- + p + ϖ- channel in contrast to a fully-exclusive analysis of the same channel. The same Fermi-unsmearing method is applied to the first channel after having established the efficacy of the method using the second channel.

Rights

© 2020, Gary Hollis

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Physics Commons

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