Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Extraction of F2N from Electron-Deuteron Scattering in an MEIC

Student: Oz Amram

School: Carnegie Mellon University

Mentored By: Douglas Higinbotham

The lack of free neutron targets has made it very difficult to study the internal structure of the neutron with high precision. The construction of a new Medium-energy Electron Ion Collider (MEIC) would allow us to use electron-deuteron scattering to obtain free neutron data by tagging the spectator proton. The focus of this project was to test a new model independent method of extracting the neutron structure function (F2N) from simulated cross section data. It was shown that the model independent method converges to a single value of F2N reliably for cross section data with limited random error. A model dependent modification of the method was shown to reduce error in the extracted F2N. This result demonstrates the proof of concept for a model-independent way of extracting F2N from cross section data. A better extraction of F2N from electron-deuteron scattering would fill in one of the major longstanding gaps in our knowledge of nuclear structure.