Department of Physics

Professor Palatchi's research focuses on precision measurements of parity-violation in electron scattering. These parity-violation measurements are a useful tool for studying the building blocks of nuclei and for testing the completeness of the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. Her scientific research program uses polarized electron beams to conduct precision measurements in nuclear and particle physics. Her PhD thesis and postdoc work in the PREX-2 and CREX collaborations measured the “neutron skin” of Lead-208 and Calcium-48, an essential piece of information needed to understand the compressibility of neutron stars for which she was awarded the Stuart Jay Freedman Award. Caryn's research program at IUB will support the MOLLER experiment to be performed at Jefferson Lab, which will measure parity violation in polarized electron-electron scattering to obtain the weak charge of the electron to unprecedented precision and search for physics beyond the Standard Model. Caryn additionally received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program Award enabling further research into exploring fundamental physics at high precision by supporting the P2 experiment to measure the weak charge of the proton at extreme precision at the MESA accelerator.  She has established an optics lab at CEEM to further improve her provisionally patented Pockels cell opto-electrical device to generate and control electron polarization at the nanometer level using polarized light-induced photoemission from gallium arsenide to perform extremely high-precision nuclear physics experiments.