The main physics program supported by this award is directed at the study of flavor structure of nucleons and nuclei. Research will be carried out at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago as part of the SeaQuest collaboration. The program with SeaQuest is focused on Drell/Yan production of di-muon pairs to determine the light antiquark flavor distributions in the nucleon sea, and how the light antiquark flavor distributions are modified in nuclei. This information will provide direct input to the parton distribution fits that cannot yet be determined from first principles. A smaller effort is aimed to enable measurements of a fundamental prediction of Quantum Chromodynamics that tests our concepts for analyzing hard-scattering reactions in strong interactions, known as the sign change of the Sivers function. In addition, the Michigan group will lead the operation of the cryogenic targets as part of their hardware responsibility to the SeaQuest experiment.
The SeaQuest experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago will provide a better understanding of how light anti-quarks are distributed in nucleons and nuclei, and on the physical mechanism which generates the sea of the nucleon. A smaller, but very important effort will be spent on developing a polarized Drell-Yan program at Fermilab that is complementary to the spin physics programs at Brookhaven National Lab and Jefferson Lab. This program builds on the expertise the group has gained, and is a natural extension of the group's work over the past years. It allows them to play a major role in the Drell-Yan experiment at Fermilab now, and to lead the way towards a polarized Drell-Yan program at Fermilab in the future. Education and training of both, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as outreach aimed at the general public is an important aspect of this research program.
