The Qweak Experiment: First Determination of the Weak Charge of the Proton

Qweak part 2: The Qweak experiment at Jefferson Lab uses parity-violating electron scattering to make a precision measurement of the proton's weak charge. The experiment has recently reported a measurement of the asymmetry in $\overline{e}-p$ scattering at low $Q^2$ = 0.0250 GeV/c$^2$ based on approximately 1/25 of the overall data collected in the experiment. The small $Q^2$ of the measurement has made possible the first determination of the weak charge of the proton, $Q^p_W$, by incorporating this new measurement with earlier parity violating electron scattering data at higher $Q^2$ to obtain hadronic corrections. The details of the analysis required to extract $Q^p_W$ and its error from the measured asymmetry will be presented.