The 2010 publication of Professor Puckett’s doctoral dissertation research in Physical Review Letters recently became a “famous paper” (250-499 citations) in the INSPIRE High Energy Physics publication database.

The INSPIRE database entry for the paper can be found here.

The final published version of the paper at the Physical Review Online Archive (PROLA)

The recent, more detailed archival publication of the GEp-III and GEp-2gamma experiments.

Professor Puckett’s doctoral dissertation on which both papers are based.

Effective August 23, 2019, Professor Puckett has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and tenured.

 

Experiment E12-07-109, a measurement of the proton electromagnetic form factor ratio to Q²=12 GeV² using the polarization transfer method, of which Professor Puckett is a spokesperson, was recently re-evaluated by the Jefferson Lab Program Advisory Committee at its 47th meeting in July (PAC47), under JLab’s jeopardy review process. Experiments that have been previously approved but are not yet scheduled after a certain time period must be periodically reviewed by the PAC to determine whether they are still relevant, and re-evaluated in terms of both beam time allocations and scientific rating and priority.

The PAC re-approved E12-07-109 with no changes in beam time allocation (45 PAC days) or scientific rating (“A-“). E12-07-109 is projected to run in 2022 based on current informal internal Hall A schedule planning.

The proposal update document submitted for the jeopardy review can be found here.

The figure below shows the projected accuracy of the proton form factor ratio measurements from E12-07-109, compared to existing world data and a selection of theoretical models:

 

Starting August 5, 2019, Professor Puckett was elected by the current membership of the Super BigBite Spectrometer Collaboration Coordinating Committee (CC) to serve a one-year term as the chair of the committee.

The CC is the governing body of the SBS collaboration, formed to ensure the efficient preparation and execution of the experimental program, by identifying tasks which need to be carried out and identifying volunteers from the collaboration to carry out those tasks which the CC chooses to delegate, and by ensuring adequate communication between groups working on different aspects of the project, organizing informal weekly phone meetings and formal collaboration meetings twice a year.

Professor Puckett and the graduate student and postdoc members of the group are at Jefferson Lab for the currently running “PREX-II” experiment in Hall A, ongoing detector assembly and cosmic ray commissioning work for the upcoming Super BigBite installation in Hall A, and for the SBS Collaboration Meeting on August 5-6. The PREX-II experiment is a precise measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in low-Q² elastic electron scattering from the ²⁰⁸Pb (Lead) nucleus. This measurement is highly sensitive to the “neutron skin thickness” of the lead nucleus, and constitutes a precise test of state-of-the-art nuclear theory and also has significant implications for the equation of state of neutron matter, relevant to the structure of neutron stars.

UConn graduate students Sebastian Seeds and Provakar Datta have been at JLab this summer assembling and cabling the detector package for the BigBite spectrometer, the main electron detector for the upcoming SBS family of experiments in Hall A, in preparation for cosmic ray testing and commissioning prior to installation in Hall A, currently scheduled for spring 2020.