Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Recommissioning of the Qweak Drift Chambers

Student: Christian Davison

School: Christopher Newport University

Mentored By: Bradley Sawatzky

Drift chambers are used to tell the position and direction of particles passing through them. The Qweak drift chambers were used in the experimental Halls before the 12 GeV upgrade at Jefferson Lab. The purpose of this project was to once again make these chambers work for use in future experiments. A cosmic ray telescope was set up such that one scintillator was strapped on both sides of the drift chamber. This allowed for more accurate events since all three components had to send a signal for an event to be recorded. Then, we then studied how the chambers responded to the cosmic ray passing through them. It was shown that a majority of the wires in the chamber recorded proper data and performed up to standard. It was the case before that all of the wires printed proper data in all four of the drift chambers. Future plans hope to reproduce this case and ensure all wires are receiving signals. Once complete, all of the drift chambers will be moved and processed at Duke University for use in a measurement of the Bethe-Heitler pair-production process.