Giovanetti This project is designed to integrate important contributions to the ongoing research at Jefferson Lab with an educational experience for promising undergraduate students. A team of undergraduate students and one full time faculty member, Dr. Kevin Giovanetti, will carry out this work both at Jefferson Lab and in the James Madison University detector development laboratory. One of our goals is to extend the operational capabilities and to improve the CLAS detector for performance at the higher anticipated beam energies of CEBAF. Several types of calorimeters have been proposed as possible new components for CLAS. Their design, performance and geometry need to be assessed. The JMU group is studying these issues and will develop readout mechanisms and methods for calibrating the proposed calorimeters. The CLAS detector has been operational since December 1997 and has been making important contributions to many outstanding questions in Nuclear and Particle physics. The central physics interest for the JMU group is the three-quark system and a program to enhance our fundamental understanding of this structure is now underway. The proton and the neutron are the best known of the particles that are described as a bound state of three valence quarks. The JMU group will support this exploration and plans to continue to perform shift work and to provide an acceptable level of general service toward the overall CLAS effort for the duration of this proposal. This is important. It helps maintain a high level of productivity for the CLAS detector. In addition to the CLAS project, a small portion of the requested funds will support a contribution to a new effort. The JMU research group plans to build a calibration and monitoring system for a newly approved mu+ Lifetime experiment at PSI and to participate in data-taking and initial beam tests. The work overlaps the ongoing detector development at JMU. The measurement is of fundamental importance because it can be used to determine the strength of a fundamental interaction, the weak coupling constant GF.
