Dominika Alfs successfully completes PhD
In February, Dominika Alfs, AVA Fellow based at Forschungszentrum Jülich, defended her thesis Search for Polarization Effects of Antiprotons Produced in pA Collisions and earned her PhD at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Dominika worked under supervision of Dr. Dieter Grzonka and Prof. James Ritman. A brief introduction into the subject of her thesis is given below.
Even though several methods have already been proposed, the preparation of a sufficiently polarized antiproton beam, useful for further experiments, remains a challenge. The goal of the P349 antiproton polarization experiment is to investigate if antiprotons produced in a high energy proton beam collision with an unpolarized solid target are polarized. If the antiproton production process results in a significant degree of polarization, this method could be used to prepare antiproton beams in the existing and planned antiproton facilities.
Three beam times have been performed at the T11 beamline of the East Area at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and were the first attempt to measure antiproton polarization in the production process. Dominika analyzed the existing data which resulted in a very good understanding of the measurement conditions and design of an improved measurement setup. Furthermore, Dominika prepared detailed Monte Carlo simulation studies to investigate the required statistics for a given sensitivity of a polarization determination.
The achieved statistics was not sufficient to extract an upper limit for the polarization but the analysis and simulation studies have shown that a measurement of the antiproton polarization via elastic antiproton-proton scattering at the T11 beam line at CERN is achievable with sufficient statistics. Currently the test measurements with the improved setup are ongoing at the Cooler Synchrotron (COSY) at Forschungszentrum Jülich and a next measurement at CERN is planned in the nearest future.
Congratulations!