Elucidating the fundamental nature of hadrons with Particle Identification Detector

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£118,400

Jan. 1, 2022

March 31, 2022

In this application we request a timely and cost-effective UK equipment contribution to next generation science programmes with the CrystalBall@MAMI. This new research landscape is enabled by the commissioning of a new high-rate time projection chamber (TPC) which can operate with intense, energetic photon beams. The TPC will be constructed by the end of 2022 with experiments running in 2023. The TPC will provide charged particle tracking with exquisite accuracy and, for the first time, will allow us to detect low energy recoiling nuclei (protons, deuterons, heavier species) following photoreactions. The latter aspect opens up exciting scientific possibilities for the UK at MAMI and this new capability aligns well with our highest impact research goals.

The measurement programme will provide key information on the fundamental properties of the new d* hexaquark particle. Additionally, with the TPC there are new and exciting prospects to study in detail the in-medium interaction of the d*, using the dominant and clean d* resonance peaks accessible with nuclear recoil tagging.

As we recently showed, hexaquarks might also coexist inside neutron stars effectively restricting the maximum allowed neutron star size at exactly the value determined by LIGO and NICER. We have also shown that primordinary produced hexaquark condensate might play a role of dark-matter particles. To elaborate this concept, one needs to investigate hexaquark behaviour inside the nuclear medium. It can be done in a laboratory environment, and then apply the results to the nuclear equation of state (EoS) of neutron stars.

York leads a major CB@MAMI programme aiming to accurately determine the size and shape of neutron skins, using the method of coherent pion photoproduction. Accurate skin determinations are a powerful discriminator for nuclear theories; DFT and ab-initio predictions predict widely varying skin thicknesses, highlighting how accurate measurements will provide crucial missing information for nuclear science. The neutron skin also correlates with the most poorly constrained and elusive parameter in the EoS for nucleonic matter, the density dependence of the symmetry energy (L). The TPC allows measurement of momentum transfer to the nuclear recoil with greatly reduced systematics, enables much improved separation of coherent and incoherent processes, opens up new target possibilities (e.g. noble gases like Xenon) and for subsequent gamma spectroscopy on the recoil nuclei can veto unwanted backgrounds from nuclear breakup.