The electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon characterize the effect of its internal structure on its response to an electromagnetic probe as studied in elastic electronnucleon scattering. These form factors are functions of the squared four-momentum transfer Q 2 between the electron and the proton. The two main classes of observables of this reaction are the scattering cross section and polarization asymmetries, both of which are sensitive to the form factors in different ways. When considering large momentum transfers, double-polarization observables offer superior sensitivity to the electric form factor. This thesis reports the results of a new measurement of the ratio of the electric and magnetic form factors of the proton at high momentum transfer using the recoil polarization technique. A polarized electron beam was scattered from a liquid hydrogen target, transferring polarization to the recoiling protons. These protons were detected in a magnetic spectrometer which was used to reconstruct their kinematics, including their scattering angles and momenta, and the position of the interaction vertex. A proton polarimeter measured the polarization of the recoiling protons by measuring the azimuthal asymmetry in the angular distribution of protons scattered in CH 2 analyzers. The scattered electron was detected in a largeacceptance electromagnetic calorimeter in order to suppress inelastic backgrounds. The measured ratio of the transverse and longitudinal polarization components of the scattered proton is directly proportional to the ratio of form factors G
AcknowledgmentsThis thesis would not have been possible without the support and efforts of many, many people. It would be impossible to give all due credit to all of the individual efforts that went into designing, planning, staging, and executing this experiment, and the subsequent analysis of the data. Therefore, any omissions from the following acknowledgments are in no way meant to diminish those contributions.I would like to thank the members of the GEp-III collaboration whose tireless efforts made experiments E04-108 and E04-019 a success. This includes the spokespeople; Ed Brash, Mark Jones, Charles Perdrisat and Vina Punjabi, and the other outstanding physicists involved in the core collaboration. I thank Frank Wesselmann for his successful leadership of the testing, installation, commissioning and operation of the Focal Plane Polarimeter, and his significant contribution to the data analysis in the form of the event decoding and tracking software for the FPP drift chambers. I thank Mark Jones for his encyclopedic knowledge of experimental Hall C and for his outsized contribution to making the various parts of the experiment work together as a whole, and for being called upon more often than not to troubleshoot problems with the experiment as they occurred. Mark's many important contributions to the data analysis included the optimization of the HMS reconstruction coefficients. Much of what I have learned about the actual hands-on require...