{ leading research }
My Student Experience by Erik Minges ’10
In 2008, I was lucky enough to participate in my first summer internship with my nuclear physics professor Liping Gan working on the PrimEx experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Lab. The mission of the PrimEx collaboration is to measure the lifetime of the subatomic particle π0, the neutral pion, with high precision. This experiment is a very important test of quantum chromodynamics – the theory to describe the strong interaction that holds quarks and gluons together to form protons, neutrons and other particles. The decay
This experience has taught me a tremendous amount about how to perform research. It has introduced me to many new, bright scientists and has opened doors to opportunities I could have only dreamed about!
page 16 uncw re:search
photons from the π0s are detected by a high-resolution electromagnetic calorimeter (HYCAL) that consists of approximately 1200 channels of lead tungstate (PbWO4) crystal and 600 channels of lead glass Cherenkov detectors. One of the big experimental challenges of the project was to understand the properties of this calorimeter, HYCAL. I was assigned to study HYCAL by analyzing data from a 6x6 PbWO4 crystal prototype detector beam test. In order to complete my data analysis of HYCAL, I had to determine crucial properties of the PbWO4 crystals. Using a UNIX operating system, I was able to write programs in FORTRAN and C++ to perform a relative and global energy calibration and study the energy and position resolutions of the prototype detector. I also studied the shower profile of the calorimeter, which measures the dependence of the average pulse-height ratio for different crystal channels. After writing more computer programs and performing tedious statistical
analyses, I determined the adjacent channel, adjacent row and separated channel average pulse-height ratios. Amazingly, in my first summer at JLab, I had finished the energy calibration on the prototype and determined crucial properties of the PbWO4 crystals! I am excited that this program is available to students because it really provides an in-depth look at what a future career in science can be like. It has been amazing to use and learn so many advanced computer and engineering technologies and to work with top scientists in the world on cuttingedge nuclear research. This has been, by far, the most demanding – yet rewarding – experience I have yet to encounter in my life.
Internships at Jefferson Lab give students the opportunity to work on breakthrough research, a real-world research opportunity that promotes academic and career development. Erik Minges ’10 and Margaret Elizabeth Schneider ’11