Mainz Microtron
The Mainz Microtron (German name: Mainzer Mikrotron), abbreviated MAMI, is a microtron (particle accelerator) which provides a continuous wave, high intensity, polarized electron beam with an energy up to 1.6 GeV. MAMI is the core of an experimental facility for particle, nuclear and X-ray radiation physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany). It is one of the largest campus-based accelerator facilities for basic research in Europe. The experiments at MAMI are performed by about 200 physicists of many countries organized in international collaborations.
Research goals
The scientific research at MAMI focusses on the investigation of the structure and dynamics of hadrons, particles consisting of quarks and gluons bound by the strong force. The most important hadrons are protons and neutrons, the basic constituents of atomic nuclei and, therefore, the building blocks of ordinary matter. Electrons and photons interact with the electric charges and the magnetization of quarks inside a hadron in a relatively weak and well understood way providing undistorted information about basic hadronic properties like (transverse) size, magnetic moments, distribution of charge and magnetism, flavor structure, polarizabilities and excitation spectrum. At MAMI the full potential of electroweak probes is explored in an energy region characteristic for the first hadronic excitations and with a spatial resolution in the order of the typical hadron size of about 1 fm.
