Haiyan Gao, Henry W. Newson Distinguished Professor  

Haiyan Gao

Office Location: FFSC 2313, Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address: haiyan.gao@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 (China), 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). 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

Teaching (Fall 2024):

  • Physics 121d.05d, General physics i-a (dis) Synopsis
    Physics 154, F 03:30 PM-05:30 PM

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Achenbach, P; Adhikari, D; Afanasev, A; Afzal, F; Aidala, CA; Al-bataineh, A; Almaalol, DK; Amaryan, M; Androić, D; Armstrong, WR; Arratia, M; Arrington, J; Asaturyan, A; Aschenauer, EC; Atac, H; Avakian, H; Averett, T; Ayerbe Gayoso, C; Bai, X; Barish, KN; Barnea, N; Basar, G; Battaglieri, M; Baty, AA; Bautista, I; Bazilevsky, A; Beattie, C; Behera, SC; Bellini, V; Bellwied, R; Benesch, JF; Benmokhtar, F; Bernardes, CA; Bernauer, JC; Bhatt, H; Bhatta, S; Boer, M; Boettcher, TJ; Bogacz, SA; Bossi, HJ; Brandenburg, JD; Brash, EJ; Briceño, RA; Briscoe, WJ; Brodsky, SJ; Brown, DA; Burkert, VD; Caines, H; Cali, IA; Camsonne, A; Carman, DS; Caylor, J; Cerci, DS; Cerci, S; Chamizo Llatas, M; Chatterjee, S; Chen, JP; Chen, Y; Chen, YC; Chien, YT; Chou, PC; Chu, X; Chudakov, E; Cline, E; Cloët, IC; Cole, PL; Connors, ME; Constantinou, M; Cosyn, W; Covrig Dusa, S; Cruz-Torres, R; D'Alesio, U; da Silva, C; Davoudi, Z; Dean, CT; Dean, DJ; Demarteau, M; Deshpande, A; Detmold, W; Deur, A; Devkota, BR; Dhital, S; Diefenthaler, M; Dobbs, S; Döring, M; Dong, X; Dotel, R; Dow, KA; Downie, EJ; Drachenberg, JL; Dumitru, A; Dunlop, JC; Dupre, R; Durham, JM; Dutta, D; Edwards, RG; Ehlers, RJ; El Fassi, L; Elaasar, M; Elouadrhiri, L, The present and future of QCD, Nuclear Physics A, vol. 1047 (July, 2024) [doi]  [abs].
  2. Liu, T; Zhao, Z; Cai, M; Byer, D; Gao, H, Subthreshold production of J/ψ mesons from the deuteron with the proposed Solenoidal Large Intensity Device, Physical Review C, vol. 109 no. 6 (June, 2024) [doi]  [abs].
  3. Gao, H; Gu, Y, Establishing a Research-Focused Liberal Arts College in China: Duke Kunshan University, Daedalus, vol. 153 no. 2 (May, 2024), pp. 68-82, MIT Press [doi]  [abs].
  4. Gao, H; Khachatryan, V; Zhou, J, Experimental Status on the Proton Charge Radius, Proceedings of Science, vol. 413 (March, 2024)  [abs].
  5. Gao, H; Zhou, J, Recent Results on Proton Charge Radius and Polarizabilities, Few-Body Systems, vol. 65 no. 1 (March, 2024) [doi]  [abs].

Highlight:
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 recently, her group's studies of the structure of the nucleon have been focusing on a precision measurement of the proton (see her group's 2019 Nature paper on this topic) and deuteron charge radii to elucidate on the proton and the deuteron charge radius puzzles, and on imaging the three-dimensional structure of the nucleon in momentum space through the extraction of transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs), employing polarized semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes. The nucleon tomography provided by TMDs will uncover the rich QCD dynamics, and provide quantitative information about the quark orbital angular momentum contribution to the proton spin. TMDs will also provide information on fundamental quantities such as the tensor charge of the nucleon, a quantity not only important for testing lattice QCD predictions, but also important for searches of new physics beyond the Standard Model together with the next generation of nucleon electric dipole moment experiments. Her group is playing leading roles in the Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) project at Jefferson Lab, a high profile program which will make major impact on TMD physics, proton mass puzzle through precision measurement of J/psi production near threshold, and search for new physics beyond the Standard Model using parity-violating deep inelastic scattering. 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). Her research is being carried out mostly at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, Virginia, and the HIGS facility at DFELL.

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

Postdocs Mentored

  • Sucheta Jawalkar (January 15, 2012 - September 04, 2013)  
  • Pinghan Chu (September, 2011 - October 10, 2014)  
  • 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