July 1, 2009
 |
| Professor Mike Snow. |
Dr. Mike Snow of the Department of Physics and IUCF has received an award from the Indiana University Office of the Vice Provost for Research to develop a high-precision neutron spin rotation facility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, MD. This facility will build upon his laboratory´s recent search for parity-odd neutron spin rotation in liquid helium, which is the most sensitive measurement of its type ever performed, and make possible future experiments in helium, deuterium, and hydrogen targets. This accuracy is expected to be enough to see clearly the effects of quark-quark weak interactions in these systems for the first time. In addition, the same apparatus can be modified to conduct sensitive searches for possible new weak spin-dependent forces between neutrons and matter with ranges in the micron to Angstrom region. This facility will help put the IU nuclear physics experimental group in a strong position to take full advantage of the new science made possible by NIST´s construction of one of the most intense slow neutron beam for fundamental physics with neutrons in the world, and would further build upon the several existing IU/NIST collaborations in neutron physics and scattering.
