FIRST YEAR LABORATORY: PROJECT PROPOSAL - 2010
PROJECT TITLE
Simulating the Landmark Parity-Violation Experiment of Wu et al.
DEMONSTRATOR
Mike Williams
E-MAIL ADDRESS michael.williams@imperial.ac.uk
PROJECT OUTLINE:
TELEPHONE
NUMBER
47815
ROOM NUMBER
528
CODE
HEPP11
RESEARCH
GROUP
HEP
This project involves using the Monte Carlo technique to simulate the first experiment to observe parity violation.
Until 1957, it was almost 100% accepted by the physics community that parity was conserved in all physical processes. In 1956 T.D. Lee and C.N.
Yang published a thorough study of the existing literature which not only showed that, in fact, parity conservation had not been proven experimentally in Weak decays but also suggested several direct experimental tests. One of these experiments (beta decay of Cobalt-60) was carried out by Wu et al. and violation of parity conservation was observed for the first time.
The goal of this project is for the student to build a simulation of Wu et al.'s famous experiment. The starting point will simply be to simulate the distribution of electrons produced via beta decay of polarized Cobalt-60 atoms and demonstrate that parity is violated. The student can then proceed to improve the realism of their simulation by adding effects such as the degree of polarization, detector efficiency, etc. They can then examine how to improve the performance of their detector.
Students: Please write your name below if you are planning to bid for this project.
You must also fill out the bidding form!

P ROJECT I NFRASTRUCTURE A SSESSMENT
– 2010
Code:
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Are there any safety aspects which need special attention (i.e. use of lasers, radioactive sources)? No.
Will the project require machining services from the mechanical workshop? No.
Is this a computing project? Yes.
If it is would it be done on:
[a] The PC network Yes.
[b] Computing facilities within your research group No.
If the answer to [a] was yes then complete the following three questions:
[i] Do you require additional software or libraries? No.
[ii] Do you anticipate exceptional cpu or disk storage
(>100Mbyte) requirements? No.
[iii] Have you discussed your requirements with Martin Morris? No.
Which programming language are you wishing to use? C/C++ (although, the student could use other languages if they wish).
Are you proficient in the necessary programming language? Yes.