RESEARCH ENTERPRISE

QWEAK Experiment

The Qweak is an international collaboration experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. The purpose of Qweak is to measure the weak mixing angle at high precision and look for new physics beyond the Standard Model. The weak force plays an important role in the processes of nuclear decays but is difficult to measure. Louisiana Tech University is responsible for the construction and installation of the forward tracking chamber for Qweak. Read more about the Qweak collaboration on the facility website.

Research Highlights

In 2013 the Qweak collaboration (including the CAPS faculty Dr. Wells, Dr. Simicevic and Dr. Johnston) reported in Physical Review Letters the first measurement of the weak charge of the proton. The measurement, based on just 4% of the available data, is in agreement with the theoretical prediction of the Standard Model. Still, further analysis using all of the acquired data may potentially reveal a discrepancy with the theory which would be evidence of new physics. In 2013 the Qweak collaboration (including the CAPS faculty Dr. Wells, Dr. Simicevic and Dr. Johnston) reported in Physical Review Letters the first measurement of the weak charge of the proton. The measurement, based on just 4% of the available data at the time, was shown to be in general agreement with the theoretical prediction of the Standard Model. In 2018, the same team of CAPS researchers reported a much higher precision result using all of the acquired data. This work was published in the prestigious Nature journal showing that the estimated value of the proton’s weak charge is in excellent agreement with the Standard Model.