Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2008 Joint Spring Meeting of the Texas Sections of APS, AAPT, and Zone 13 of SPS
Volume 53, Number 1
Thursday–Saturday, March 6–8, 2008; Corpus Christi, Texas
Session APS4: Nuclear and High Energy Physics |
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Chair: Wayne Kinnison, Texas A and M Kingsville Room: Omni Corpus Christi Hotel Marina Tower Riviera I |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 10:30AM - 10:42AM |
APS4.00001: A PEP model of the electron. R.L. Collins One of the more profound mysteries of physics is how nature ties together EM fields to form an electron. A way to do this is examined in this study. A bare magnetic dipole containing a flux quantum spins stably, and produces an inverse square \textbf{E}= -\textbf{vxB} electric field similar to what one finds from ``charge''. Gauss' law finds charge in this model, though there be none. For stability, a current loop about the waist of the magnetic dipole is needed and we must go beyond the classical Maxwell's equations to find it. A spinning \textbf{E} field is equivalent to an electric displacement current. The sideways motion of the spinning \textbf{E} (of constant magnitude) creates a little-recognized transverse electric displacement current about the waist. Transverse motion of \textbf{E} supports the dipolar \textbf{B} field, \textbf{B=vxE}/c\^{}2. Beyond the very core of the magnetic dipole, each of these two velocities is essentially c and \textbf{vxE}/c\^{}2 = \textbf{vx(-vxB})/c\^{}2 = \textbf{B}. The anisotropy of the vxB field is cured by precession about an inclined axis. Choosing a Bohr magneton for the magnetic dipole and assuming it spins at the Compton frequency, Gauss' law finds Q = e. Charge is useful but not fundamental. With this, Maxwell's equations can be written in terms of the E and B fields alone. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 10:42AM - 10:54AM |
APS4.00002: Obtaining the inverse square law from Quantum Field Theory Morgan Lynch, David Bixler The formalism of quantum field theory (QFT) has been applied with success to all known fundamental forces except gravity. Although the recent attempts at a quantum gravitational theory based on QFT have been shown to be nonrenormalizable, there are still attempts being made to eliminate the infinities which plague its equations. As an introduction to QFT with an emphasis on the gravitational interaction, we will answer the question often asked by beginning physics students: Why does the gravitational force obey an inverse square law? We will show that, according to QFT, the presence of two particles in a massless boson field will yield an inverse square attractive force. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 10:54AM - 11:06AM |
APS4.00003: The Physics of the Very Small Using a Very Large Machine Rishiraj Pravahan Very soon the largest particle collider ever built will be operational producing an energy density to mimic the conditions of the big-bang. It is a common consensus among particle physicists today that our current knowledge of physics is not complete, and the Large Hadron Collider will produce `new physics'. To detect and understand this new physics the detector named ATLAS has been built by a large collaboration of institutions, University of Texas at Arlington being one of them. This talk concerns my involvement with the ATLAS detector and the possibilities of discovering Super-Symmetry through Monte-Carlo studies and methods to analyze the data that is collected in the first year of collisions. The goal is to explore and discover the unknown and push the frontiers of our understanding of the universe. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 11:06AM - 11:18AM |
APS4.00004: New Fission Cross Section Measurements using a Time Projection Chamber Michael Sadler A group of six universities (ACU, California Polytechnic, Colorado School of Mines, Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio, and Oregon State) and three national laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Idaho) have undertaken the task of building a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to measure the fission cross sections needed for the next generation of nuclear reactors. The fission TPC concept will be presented, and why we think we can improve on 50 years of fission study. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 11:18AM - 11:30AM |
APS4.00005: Returning to Lattice QCD Beth Thacker The author is returning to lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) after a stretch of doing physics education research. She focuses on calculations of heavy quark bound states, discussing quantities that can be matched to experimental results, comparing the work she did 15 years ago with the state of the field today. She is re-entering the field as a collaborator with members of the high precision QCD (HPQCD) and United Kingdom QCD (UKQCD) collaborations and discusses the changes in the field and the work she will be doing. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 11:30AM - 11:42AM |
APS4.00006: Calibrating Scintillator position measurement for testing RPC modules for PHENIX at RHIC Daniel Jumper PHENIX is a large, high-energy experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. One of PHENIX's many goals is to study the spin structure of the proton through observing W-boson decays from quark-anti quark interactions in polarized p-p collisions. An upgraded trigger system using Resistive Plate Chambers that are being built for PHENIX will increase the rejection factor of unfavorable events by two orders of magnitude so that this measurement is possible. As these RPCs are manufactured and assembled into larger sections for installation, an important step in quality assurance is testing each module in a cosmic ray test stand triggered by hodoscopes. These scintillators will also provide a position measurement, giving us positioning information in directions where the stacked RPCs have low spatial resolution. With careful timing calibration the information from the scintillators will enable us to test aspects of the RPC manufacturing that will lead to much higher quality monitoring. This talk will include methods and some results from this positioning measurement. [Preview Abstract] |
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