Haiyan Gao, Henry Newson Professor and Chair  

Haiyan Gao

Office Location: 2313 FFSC
Office Phone: (919) 660-2622, (919) 660-2505
Email Address: gao@phy.duke.edu
Web Page: http://www.tunl.duke.edu/~mep

Specialties:
Experimental nuclear physics

Education:
Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 1994
B.S., Tsinghua University, 1988

Current projects: Neutron EDM, Precision measurement of proton charge radius, Polarized Compton scattering, neutron and proton transversity, search for phi-N bound state, polarized photodisintegration of 3He

Research Description: Prof. Gao's research focuses on understanding the structure of the nucleon in terms of quark and gluon degrees of freedom of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), search for QCD exotics, and fundamental symmetry studies at low energy to search for new physics beyond the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. Most of her work utilizes the novel experimental technique of scattering polarized electrons or photons from polarized gas targets. Her group has built a number of state-of-the-art polarized gas targets including H/D internal gas target and a high-pressure polarized 3He target for photon experiments using the High Intensity Gamma Source (HIGS) facility at the Duke Free Electron Laser Laboratory (DFELL)(DFELL). Currently, her group and collaborators from Indiana University are also employing such a high-pressure, thin-window polarized 3He target in a new search for spin-dependent short-range forces. She and her group are also collaborating on a challenging experiment aiming at a major improvement over the current limit on the neutron electric dipole moment. Such an experiment will make important contributions to the understanding of CP violation and to the search of New Physics beyond the Standard Model. Her research is being carried out at Duke University, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), the HIGS facility at DFELL, and the Fundamental Neutron Beam Line at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Areas of Interest:
Nucleon structure (QCD Physics), Fundamental symmetry study, test of the Standard Model of Physics, development of polarized targets

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. P.H. Chu, H. Gao and others, Laboratory Search for Spin-dependent Short-range Force from Axion-Like-Particles using Optically Polarized 3He gas, Phys. Rev. D Rapid Communication (Accepted, January, 2013) .
  2. Rensheng Wang, H. Gao, and others, A Practical Method to Determine the Spatial Resolution of GEM Detector, Nucl. Inst. and Methods A, vol. 701 (2013), pp. 54-57 .
  3. H. Fonvieille et al. including H. Gao, Virtual Compton Scattering and the Generalized Polarizabilities of the Proton at Q^2=0.92 and 1.76 GeV^2, Phys. Rev. C, vol. 86 (2012), pp. 015210 .
  4. W. Chen, H. Gao, and others, Amplitude analysis of $\gamma n \rightarrow \pi^{-} p$ data above 1 GeV, Phys. Rev. C, vol. 86 (2012), pp. 015206 .
  5. Q.J. Ye et al. including H. Gao, Production of $K^{+}K^{-}$ pairs in proton-proton collisions at 2.83 GeV, Phys. Rev. C, vol. 85 (2012), pp. 035211 .

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

Postdocs Mentored

  • Sucheta Jawalkar (January 15, 2012 - present)  
  • Pinghan Chu (September, 2011 - present)  
  • Mehdi Meziane (June, 2011 - present)  
  • Simona Malace (August 1, 2010 - June 30, 2012)  
  • Bawitlung Lalremruata (May 15, 2010 - May 14, 2011)  
  • Qiang Ye (September 1, 2008 - January 31, 2011)  
  • Yi Qiang (May 1, 2007 - January 31, 2010)  
  • Xiaofeng Zhu (January 15, 2006 - November 30, 2008)  
  • Kevin Kramer (2003/08-2006/07)  
  • Krishni Wijesooriya (2003/02-2003/07)  
  • Wang Xu (November 1, 2002 - May 15, 2005)  
  • Xiang Hong (1999/11-2002/10)  
  • Dipangkar Dutta (1999/02-2003/01)  
  • Timothy Black (1998/03-1999/06)  
Selected Invited Lectures

  1. ``TMD Experimental Overview'', Invited talk at the International Workshop on Physics Opportunities at an Electron Ion Collider, August 20-22, 2012, Bloomington, IN., August 20, 2012    
  2. ``New Results from HIGS'', Invited talk at the Gordon Research Conference on Photonuclear Reactions, August 5-10, 2012, Holderness, NH., August 08, 2012    
  3. ``Probing the Three-Dimensional Structure of the Nucleon at 12-GeV Jefferson Lab and Beyond'', Invited talk at the US-Korea Workshop: International Cooperation on Particle, Nuclear and Astrophysics, April 24-25, 2012, KAIST, Dae Jeon, South Korea., April 24, 2012    
  4. The Radial Distribution of the Proton and its Constituents, July 25, 2011, Invited plenary talk at the 19th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC11), July 24-29, 2011, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.    
  5. Hadron Physics at Low Energies, February 23, 2011, Invited opening talk at the ``Many-body structure of strongly interacting systems'', Conclusive symposium, CRC443, Feb 23-25, 2011, Mainz, Germany    
  6. Frontiers in Nuclear Physics and Personal Research Experience, November 11, 2010, University public lecture, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China    
  7. Future Spin Physics at JLab, September, 2010, Invited Plenary talk at the 19th International Spin Physics Symposium (SPIN2010), Sep. 27 - Oct. 2, 2010, Juelich, Germany    
  8. Recent results on structure functions, July, 2010, Invited Plenary talk at the 35th International Conference Ion High Energy Physics, July 22-28, 2010, Paris, France    
  9. The Study of Neutron Transversity Using a Polarized 3He Target at Jefferson Lab, June, 2009, Invited plenary talk at the 4th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP 2009)    
  10. Nuclear and Nucleon Structure: Review, May, 2009, Invited plenary talk at the at the 10th Conference on the Intersections of Particles and Nuclear Physics (CIPANP 2009), San Diego, CA