Neutrino Physics - both the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations as well as using the neutrino to probe the structure of the nucleon.
The phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, where a neutrino of one type spontaneously transforms into another, has important and far-reaching implications for particle physics and cosmology. For this to occur, at least one neutrino must be massive and the heretofore-observed lepton-flavor conservation law must be violated.
Neutrino oscillations have been observed in a variety of experiments thoughout the world. We are looking more carefully at one of these observations in an experiment called MiniBooNE at Fermilab.
The neutrino may also be as a probe to investigate nuclear structure. We are currently designing an experiment called FINeSE which will measure the strange quark contribution to the proton spin by elastically scattering neutrinos from protons.My field of research is experimental nuclear physics. Among other topics, I have studied pion-nucleus total cross sections, pionic atoms, anomalous alpha scattering from medium-weight nuclei, forward dispersion relations in proton-nucleus elastic scattering, nucleon-nucleus elastic scattering and reactions at intermediate energies, effective NN interaction and nuclear matter density, neutral decay modes of the proton-antiproton system at rest,pion production from nuclei and in pp and pd collisions, and few-nucleon bremsstrahlung and capture reactions. In many cases, the emphasis was on the polarization observables of these reactions.
