By Marco Negrete
Staff Writer
Cal State Dominguez Hills Physics Professor John Price has received a $235,000 grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) that will, in part, help fund students who assist with his proton research.
“What this grant allows me to do, is to have my students work during the summer months at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., where I conduct my research,” Price said. “This is the premier nuclear physics accelerator in the U.S.”
Price has worked with 16 graduate students in the last decade. The DOE grant helps Price support student research, as well as fund his own work.
Presently, Price and his students have isolated a signal for the elastic scattering of a Lambda particle on a proton.
“You can compare that to two billiard balls hitting each other on a pool table,” Price said. “They strike each other, and then go their separate ways. The difference here is that the two billiard balls have different masses (the Lambda is about 20 percent heavier than the proton), and the Lambda will decay into other particles after a very short time.”
This finding was significant, as Price and his students were unable to see the signal at first. Price’s first student on the project, Alec Thompson, worked over a year on this, but was never able to clearly view the process.
“I worked on this for two years, until last November, when my student Juan Cardenas and I were able to find the first evidence for this process,” Price said. “Having isolated the signal, we now need to understand the properties of the Lambda [to see] how fast is it going, how many of them are there, etc.”
Price’s student Amauri Tapia is working on this at the moment. She and Price are hoping to have answers by the end of the academic year.
Even with the positive results Price and his students have had with their proton research, challenges presented themselves, especially when it came to funding.
“While it’s possible to do research without leaving CSUDH, the experience a student can get by going out to the lab is incredible,” Price said. “There, you get a chance to meet literally everyone active in the field.”
“Plane flights, dorm rooms, and salary all imply a major investment, even for a short summer stay,” Price said. “With this grant, I can send two students out to the lab every summer.”
Price continues to have faith in his students’ abilities to continue coming up with positive results.
“Throughout this work, the students have taken lead roles in the analysis, which I expect will continue in the coming years,” Price said.
Research done by Price and his students have provided inspiring results, even though more tests and research needs to be done. Price hopes there will be more advances in their research in the upcoming years.
This is the fourth grant that Price has received since 2007.
