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A spooky peek in the mirror: probing the weak nuclear force

Date:
-
Location:
CP179
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Chris Crawford (University of Kentucky)

The Hallowe'en Interaction (HWI) is a ghoulish way of investigating nuclear
structure.  Although it is dominated by the unsinister strong interaction, it
howls out in full force in the enchanted mirror of parity violating (PV)
observables.  The HWI is classified by the spin and isospin dependence of
transition amplitudes involving S and P waves.  There is an active program to
determine these mysterious parameters by measuring hadronic PV in reactions
with spine-chilling neutron beams.  These unnerving experiments use only
few-body observables, for which nuclear wave functions are not so horribly
gruesome to calculate.  We report startling intermediate results from the
NPDGamma experiment, sensitive to the long-range weak pion exchange, and
currently haunting the SNS.  The n-3He experiment is lurking in the shaddows
to pin down isospin zero couplings frightfully soon afterwards.  A
complementary experiment to measure the ghastly neutron spin rotation in 4He
is being scared up for an improved precision run at the NCNR reactor at NIST.
We show how this wizardry will over-constrain the four dominant couplings of
the HWI and will lay skeletons to rest for the first time.

Event Series: