Speaker
Mr
Joshua Magee
(College of William and Mary)
Description
The Q-weak experiment completed data taking at Jefferson Laboratory in 2012, with the aim of making the first experimental determination of the proton's weak charge, $Q_W^p$, which is the neutral-weak analogue of the proton's electric charge. The experiment measured the small parity-violating asymmetry in elastic electron-proton scattering at forward angles and low momentum-transfer ($Q^2=0.026$ GeV$^2$), allowing direct extraction of $Q_W^p$. Once extracted, the current results directly probe potential new parity-violating semi-leptonic physics beyond the Standard Model at the TeV scale. This talk will focus on the implications of the current Q-weak experimental results, including the extraction of the proton and neutron weak charges, $Q_W^p$ and $Q_W^n$, the individual quark weak-vector couplings, $C_{1u}$ and $C_{1d}$, and also highlight the mass-limit reach of Standard Model extensions probed. An experimental overview will be provided, along with preliminary results from the first period of data-taking, which comprises 4% of the total data set. Projections to the final Q-weak dataset will also be discussed.
Author
Mr
Joshua Magee
(College of William and Mary)
