Date of Award

Spring 2021

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Yordanka Ilieva

Abstract

Experimental observables for hyperon-deuteron (Yd) scattering are important in the study of the YN interaction and, especially, the YNN three-body interaction. YN scattering experiments are difficult and lacking due to the short lifetime of hyperons. Currently, there is a very limited database for YN elastic scattering cross-sections, and there is no data on Yd elastic scattering cross-sections. The high-luminosity Jefferson Lab experiment E06-103 (g13), in which a real-photon beam was incident on a 40-cm- long liquid deuteron target, offers a unique opportunity to look for hyperon-deuteron elastic scattering signal, Λd being the most promising. In such a dataset, the Λ is photoproduced off a deuteron in the target and scatters off another deuteron in the same target cell. The objective of this work is to search for a Λd elastic scattering signal in a g13 data subset. By detecting the final state deuteron, and the proton and pion from Λ decay, reconstruction of the scattered and beam Λ invariant masses has been possible via four-momentum conservation in the elastic scattering process. A preliminary estimate of the number of events shows that about 4000 Λd elastic scattering events should be in the g13 data set. Thus, it is feasible to extract the total and differential cross sections as well as the Λ induced polarization for several kinematic bins.

Rights

© 2021, Brandon Steven Tumeo

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