Data Analysis Center
The Data Analysis Center at the George Washington University Institute for Nuclear Studies (INS) is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the GW Research Enhancement Funds, with strong support from the GW Virginia Science and Technology Campus.
The DAC was created in 1998 by an agreement among the Department of Energy, Jefferson Lab and the GW Center for Nuclear Studies. Recommitments have been made by all involved that assure the continuation of the DAC. Software development for the DAC is being supported by an NSF/ITR grant in conjunction with the GW Computer Science Department. The members of the DAC are Associate Research Professors R.L. Workman, and Professor I.I. Strakovsky, and Professor W.J. Briscoe. The DAC is organized as part of the GW Institute for Nuclear Studies. Since two of the DAC members also belong to our Experimental Nuclear Physics group, we have a particularly close relationship with an analysis group that will greatly aid and amplify our experimental efforts in N* and related physics.
The activities of the DAC fall into four distinct categories:
- PWA: Performing partial-wave analyses of fundamental two- and three-body reactions;
- Databases: Maintenance of databases associated with these reactions;
- Development and upkeep of the SAID system: Development of software to disseminate DAC results (as well as the results of competing model-independent analyses and potential approaches);
- Phenomenological and theoretical investigations: studies which bridge the gap between theory and experiment; in particular, the extraction of N* and D * hadronic and electromagnetic couplings.
Examples of the reaction channels being studied, in addition to the traditional p N and NN channels, are the (g ,p ) and (e,e´p ) reactions. In keeping with the experimental program at JLab, these studies are being extended to include photoproduction and electroproduction of other pseudoscalar, strange, and vector mesons, in keeping with our general goal of understanding the properties of the short-range part of the nuclear force. Even more important, however, is to develop the ability to perform a combined analysis of all of these reaction channels – this is a situation where it is clear that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.