Ivan Bazarov, professor of physics, has received a $410,000 grant from the Office of Nuclear Physics at the Department of Energy for research on long lifetime spin-polarized electron sources in particle accelerators.

“Particle accelerators have a remarkable track record of yielding measurements that enable an increase in the understanding of the fundamental laws of nuclear physics,” Bazarov writes.

All accelerators start with a particle source and one such source for generating electrons is the photocathode, but the spin contributions of the constituent particles of a proton, quarks and gluons, are not understood. A spin polarized electron beam can be used to resolve their contributions providing a powerful insight into the origins of the proton’s spin, according to Bazarov.

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