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Early days at SLAC - the quark discoveries
Marty Breidenbach, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
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The first major experiments at SLAC were the electron proton scattering studies at End Station A in the late 60’s. The deep inelastic scattering yielded a complete surprise - the electrons were scattering off charged points in the proton. Follow up experiments showed the analogous behaviour for the neutron and determined charges and spin for the “partons” - they were the quarks of Gell-Mann and Zweig. A few years later, Charm was discovered at SPEAR, and the last doubters were convinced that quarks were real. This is the 50th anniversary of the first deep inelastic publications.
I will discuss early SLAC, these experiments, and some of the personalities as seen by a beginning physicist.
About Marty Breidenbach
I started traveling to SLAC from MIT in 1966, and participated in the first electron-nucleon scattering experiments. After a year at CERN, I returned to SLAC, joining Burton Richter at SPEAR for the November Revolution and all that. Most of my subsequent work was in e+e- colliders, including SLC/SLD at SLAC and a long effort to get ILC going. Following that was EXO-200, a search for neutrinoless double beta decay. I’m now working on a new approach to the linac for a collider - C3, or the Cool Copper Collider, and dabbling in several neuroscience efforts while officially retired.
Audience: Public
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