VT Research Personnel:
Dr. Marvin Blecher
Dr. Tsuneo Kageya

Degrees Awarded:
Xi-jun Zhao (Ph.D. 1993)
Holger Meyer (Ph.D. 2002)

Description of Research & Links:

Low energy photons (visible laser light) are back-scattered from a high energy electron beam to produce high energy photons (aka gamma rays). It is like hitting a ball (photon) with a bat (electron) and accelerating the ball to very high speeds.

The gamma ray photons are aimed at polarized proton and deutron (bound state of a proton and a neutron) targets and by looking at the scattering pattern you can obtain information on the spin structure of the nucleons (protons and neutrons).

http://www.legs.bnl.gov/
http://www.bnl.gov/

The LEGS effort at Virginia Tech is, and has been, supported by the Nuclear Physics Program of the NSF, grants PHY-9901178, PHY-0136179, PHY-0243062, PHY-0553611.