[Tufts-Nu] save the date: another HEP seminar Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2:30pm

[Jeremy Wolcott <jeremy wolcott tufts edu>]

Hello again everyone!

The neutrino group will have another guest passing through towards the end of March, and we've invited him to give a seminar while he is here.  Prof. Rik Gran from the University of Minnesota Duluth is a longtime collaborator for a number of us (from his days as a student on the Soudan 2 experiment, where Tony was spokesperson at the time, to now, where he's co-spokesperson of the MINERvA experiment [co-collaborator with Tony, Hugh, and Vlad] and until recently was a convener of a DUNE physics working group [Hugh, Jeremy, Jessie, others?]).  He is known worldwide as an expert in neutrino interactions.

His seminar will be on Wednesday, March 26th at 2:30pm in room 402; see the seminar title & abstract below.  (Neutrino folks will likely recognize that as Taritree's group's normal meeting time, which this will replace.)  Rik will also be with us on Thursday.  We will organize lunch on Wednesday or Thursday of that week, to be confirmed once Rik's travel schedule is fully known.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reply, send me a Slack message, or stop by my office Tues-Fri.

-Jeremy

p.s. if I've missed anybody from the collider groups, please let me know and/or forward this message along.

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Measuring the nucleon axial form factor in deuterium and hydrogen can’t be that hard?

    Rik Gran, Professor
    Physics and Astronomy
    University of Minnesota Duluth

Co-spokesperson, MINERvA experiment

In a recent paper in Nature, the MINERvA neutrino cross section experiment presented a measurement of the axial form factor of the nucleon using anti-neutrino reactions on protons (hydrogen nuclei).   This is the first new nucleon data since the 1980’s bubble chamber measurements that used neutrino + neutron (in deuterium) reactions.  Phenomenological nucleon form factors are essential information for two customers.  They are used in the calculation of the baseline event rates for neutrino + nucleus interactions used in the search of other phenomena, such as neutrino oscillation parameters and CP violation.   They can also be calculated using QCD lattice techniques, where calculations may in principle be more precise than the existing measurements.   This talk will split between celebrating the 50 year history of the deuterium measurements and describing the new MINERvA measurement, with implications for current and upcoming neutrino experiments such as T2K, NOvA, SBN, and DUNE.