9503918 Ritchie Research will be carried out leading to photo-production of eta mesons at the CEBAF electron accelerator. The data will be used to test quark models of mesons and nucleons. In addition, measurement of the pi-meson beta-decay will be carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland with significant improvement in precision over previous measurements. The latter measurement will permit important tests of quark-lepton universality to be carried out, as well as resolving discrepancies relating to unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi- Masakawa matrix describing weak quark decays and transitions. Both experiments are high priority activities in contemporary nuclear physics and studies of fundamental symmetries. Development, construction, and utilization of major state-of-the- art equipment is integral to this activity. Education of graduate students is a strong component in every aspect of this grant. ***
