Thesis

Dimuon transverse spin asymmetries at COMPASS

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2017

• Academic Year:

  2017 / 2018

• Domain:

  Experimental Particle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Catarina Quintans

• Co-Supervisor:

  Luis Silva

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico

• Host Institution:

  Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas

• Abstract:

  Pion induced collisions on a transversely polarized ammonia target are studied at the COMPASS experiment from CERN/SPS. The measured transverse spin asymmetries of the produced muon pairs reveal the dynamics of the constituent quarks and gluons inside the colliding pion and nucleon, indirectly providing a link to their orbital angular momentum. This fundamental measurement is long awaited by the QCD community, and considered a crucial check for the relevance of intrinsic transverse momentum of quarks and gluons. The first worlwide results were obtained by COMPASS in 2015, but from a limited statistics sample. The proposed analysis of the new data to be collected during 2018 is expected to have high impact in the field. Besides doing the proposed physics analysis, the student will participate on site in the data-taking and its preparation, as well as in the data online analysis, integrated in one of the most active COMPASS groups in this topic.