The Department of Physics has an active and widely recognized program in Nuclear and Particle Physics. The majority of our present experimental programs have been focused at the nearby Bates Linear Electron Accelerator and the CEBAF accelerator at the Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News, Virginia. Both laboratories are international centers for nuclear physics research. In addition, we are embarking on a program of fundamental physics using cold neutrons at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge national Laboratories.

Because of our proximity to Bates, we have taken a major role in the design, construction, and commissioning of a major new instrument for nuclear and nucleon physics called BLAST. We will use the 1 GeV electron beam as a means to examine matter and fields on a scale ten thousand times smaller than the atom. We measure the motions of nucleons inside the nucleus and determine what processes go on inside the nucleus. We are completing the analysis of an experiment to measure the shape of the proton. We are preparing experiments to measure its size and the distribution of charge inside of it. We are collaborating on experiments to measure the charge distribution inside the neutron. We will study the motion of the fundamental constituents of the deuteron, the hydrogen atom of nuclear physics, using a unique method.

At Jefferson Lab, we have recently completed a set of experiments to study the correlation of two nucleons inside nuclei. We are set to launch a new experiment to determine whether nuclei become "transparent" to very energetic nuclear particles, testing a prediction by the theory of the fundamental interaction between their constituent quarks. At the same time, we are preparing a special nuclear target to be used in an experiment at Jefferson Lab to determine the charge of the proton not as seen by the usual electromagnetic interaction but by the weak interaction, which is the force of nature responsible for beta decay.

At Los Alamos and Oak Ridge we are collaborating on experiments using newly available beams of very slow neutrons to study the properties of the neutron itself. These experiments are sensitive to the fundamental interaction between the constituent quarks within the neutron and to the fundamental interaction leading to its beta decay to become a proton.

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