The goal of the G0 experiment is to determine the contribution of the strange quarks in the quark-antiquark sea to the structure of the nucleon. To this end, the experiment measured parityviolating asymmetries from elastic electron-proton scattering from 0.12 ≤ Q2 ≤ 1.0 (GeV/c)2 at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. These asymmetries come from the interference of the electromagnetic and neutral weak interactions, and are sensitive to the strange quark contributions in the proton. The results from the forward-angle measurement, the linear combination of the strange electric and magnetic form factors GsE +[eta]GsM, suggest possible non-zero, Q2 dependent, strange quark contributions and provide new information to understand the magnitude of the contributions. This dissertation presents the analysis and results of the forward-angle measurement. In addition, the G0 experiment measured the beam-normal single-spin asymmetry in the elastic scattering of transversely polarized 3 GeV electrons from unpolarized protons at Q2 = 0.15, 0.25 (GeV/c)2 as part of the forward-angle measurement. The transverse asymmetry provides a direct probe of the imaginary component of the two-photon exchange amplitude, the complete description of which is important in the interpretation of data from precision electron-scattering experiments. The results of the measurement indicate that calculations using solely the elastic nucleon intermediate state are insufficient and generally agree with calculations that include significant inelastic hadronic intermediate state contributions. This dissertation presents the analysis and results of this measurement.

The LSND (Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector) experiment will be performed at LAMPF in the next several years. The main goal of the experiment is to search for [nu]{sub {mu}}-[nu]{sub e} oscillations with high sensitivity; however, an increasingly important by-product of this search is to measure [nu]p → [nu]p elastic scattering and determine the strange quark contribution, [Delta]s, to the spin of the proton. With the 800-MeV proton energy of LAMPF, neutrinos are produced from pion decay-in-flight with an average energy of about 150 MeV. This energy is sufficiently high so that the [nu]p → [nu]p cross section is large and is sufficiently low so that the low Q2 approximation (Q2 {much lt} m{sub p}2) is valid and the cross section can be expressed in a simple form dependent upon [Delta]s as the only unknown. LAMPF with its 1-mA proton intensity is, therefore, an ideal accelerator to perform this measurement. 12 refs., 7 figs., 2 tabs.

Understanding the nucleon structure is currently one of the main challenges encountered in nuclear physics. The present work represents a contribution to the study of the nucleon structure and deals, in particular, with the study of the role of strange quarks in the nucleon. The latter can be investigated by determing the strange quark distribution in the nucleon as well as the contribution of the spins of strange quarks to the nucleon spin (∆s). This work first presents a measurement of ∆s performed via Deeply Inelastic Scattering of a muon beam off polarized proton and deuterium targets. The result is found to be strongly dependent on the quark fragmentation functions into hadrons (FFs), which define the probability that a quark of a given flavour fragments into a final state hadron. The FFs are poorly known, in particular, the FF of strange quark into kaons, which play an important role in the determination of ∆s. In deep inelastic scattering process, the access to the FFs is provided by the hadron multiplicities which, in turn, define the average number of hadrons produced per DIS event. Pion and kaon multiplicities have been extracted versus different kinematic variables, using DIS data collected by deeply inelastic scattering of a 160 GeV muons off a deuterium target. A first LO extraction of the fragmentation functions has then been performed using the measured pion and kaon multiplicities.

The G0 (G-Zero) forward angle experiment completed in Hall C of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF) has measured the parity violating asymmetries in elastic electron-proton scattering over a Q2 range of 0.12