Prof. Or Hen

Professor Hen’s research focuses on studies of QCD effects in the nuclear medium, and the interplay between partonic and nucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclei. Specifically, Hen utilizes high-energy scattering of electron, neutrino, photon, proton and ion off atomic nuclei to study Short-Range Correlations (SRCs): Temporal fluctuations of high-density, high-momentum, nucleon clusters in nuclei. Due to their overlapping quark distributions and strong interaction, SRC pairs serve as a bridge between low-energy nuclear structure, high-density nuclear matter, and high-energy quark distributions (the EMC effect); with important consequences for strong-interaction physics, hadronic structure and astrophysics

Hen and collaborators conducted experiments at the US based Thomas-Jefferson and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratories, as well as other accelerators around the world, where they study the structure and characteristics of SRC pairs and examined their effect on various topics in nuclear, particle, atomic and astrophysics.

In addition, Hen leads a program of neutrino-nucleus interaction studies to facilitate next generation precision neutrino oscillation measurements. This program includes leadership of the electrons-for-neutrinos measurement program at Jefferson-Lab and neutrino-argon scattering measurements using the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab.