The internal structure of protons and neutrons has remained a mystery in the scientific world. They consist of waves of quarks and gluons confined into aspace approximately 100,000 times smaller than an atom.
Charles Hyde, chair and professor of physics and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University, and his collaborators may be one step closer to solving that mystery.
Hyde's research was recently published in Nature Physics journal. "Deeply virtual Compton scattering off the neutron" was an experiment in collaboration with researchers from Faculté des Sciences de Monastir in Tunisia, Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay in France, Ohio University, Jefferson Laboratory and ODU. The experiments were performed at the Jefferson Lab.
"This research can be described as hitting a proton or neutron with a high-energy electron, and then detecting an emitted gamma ray to 'take a picture' of the quark waves," Hyde said.