This year, three graduate students in our group have won outside fellowships supporting their research into short-range correlations and hadron-structure modification in the nuclear medium. That three different agencies all elected to fund our students’ proposals speaks both to the talent and productivity of our students as well as the importance of their work.
Erin Seroka wins a 2022-23 Jefferson Lab JSA Graduate Fellowship
Erin was named one of the winners of a 2022-23 Jefferson Lab JSA Graduate Fellowship, supporting her work investigating the isospin structure of short range correlations. Erin hopes to show that the observed rise in prevalence of proton-proton short-range correlations with missing momentum is accompanied by a decrease in the prevalence of proton-neutron short range correlations. Her analysis of data from the CLAS12 Short-Range Correlations Experiment has required a huge investment of time and effort into understanding the performance of the CLAS12 Central Neutron Detector, and has made her one of the collaboration experts on that detector.
Sara Ratliff wins a 2022-23 Center for Nuclear Femtography Graduate Fellowship
Sara has won a fellowship from the Center for Nuclear Femtography supporting her work researching the motion of quarks inside bound protons and neutrons. Sara’s research uses the novel technique of “spectator recoil tagging,” using the simultaneous detection of a neutron that was merely a spectator to a nearby violent deep inelastic scattering collision to learn about the initial state of the struck nucleus or nucleon. Sara uses the CLAS12 Backward Angle Neutron Detector (BAND) to detect neutrons and has become a critical member of BAND team, working understand the efficiency and performance of the detector.
Phoebe Sharp wins a 2022-23 US Dept. of Energy, Office of Science Graduate Fellowship
Phoebe was named one of the winners of the 2022-23 US. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Research Fellowships, supporting her proposal to learn about short range correlations using the novel technique of rho meson photo-production. Instead of using the conventional method of quasi-elastic electron scattering to break up a short-range correlated nucleon-nucleon pair, Phoebe’s thesis experiment used a high energy photon beam. Phoebe is investigating signatures of pair break-up through the detection of a highly unstable rho-0 meson. Short-range correlations have never been observed in photon-induced reactions, and Phoebe hopes not only to break new ground in detection, but also confirm that previously seen properties of short-range correlations are in fact “reaction independent.”