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William & Mary
[PAST EVENT] Physics Colloquium
November 30, 2012
4pm - 5pm
Abstract: The proton and neutron, commonly referred to as nucleons, are a natural laboratory to study the strong interaction, where the fundamental degrees of freedom are quarks and gluons. In particular, knowledge of the internal spin structure of the nucleon provides a more complete understanding of the strong interaction. This type of information is crucial in our understanding of how the nucleon is constructed from its composite particles; however, measurements of neutron spin structure are especially challenging due to the difficulty in producing a high-density pure neutron target. Physicists have had to rely on light nuclei, such as the deuteron or helium-3, where the neutron is bound inside a nucleus. In this talk, I will focus on measurements using polarized helium-3 targets. An overview of the complications involved in extracting neutron information from light nuclei will be presented. Finally, an investigation of the effects of small components of the helium-3 ground state wave function via measurements of double-polarization asymmetries in quasi-elastic kinematics is discussed.