The Strangeness Physics Program at CLAS

An extensive program of strange particle production off the proton is currently underway with the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) in Hall B at Jefferson Laboratory. This talk will emphasize strangeness photo- and electroproduction in the baryon resonance region between W =1.6 and 2.5 GeV, where indications of s-channel structure are suggestive of high-mass baryon resonances coupling to kaons and hyperons in the final state. Precision measurements of cross sections and polarization observables are being carried out with both electron and real photon beams, both of which are available with high polarization at energies up to 6 GeV.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, N*2005 Conferenc

Experimental Evidence for the Pentaquark

The present experimental evidence for the existence of light pentaquarks is reviewed, including both positive and null results. I also discuss the CLAS experiments at Jefferson Laboratory that are forthcoming in the near future to address questions regarding existence, mass, width, and other quantum numbers of these five-quark baryon states.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Electron-Nucleus Scattering VIII conferenc

GlueX: The Search for Gluonic Excitations at Jefferson Laboratory

One of the unanswered and most fundamental questions in physics regards the nature of the confinement mechanism of quarks and gluons in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Exotic hybrid mesons manifest gluonic degrees of freedom and their detailed spectroscopy will provide the precision data necessary to test assumptions in lattice QCD and the specific phenomenology leading to confinement. Photoproduction is expected to be a particularly effective manner to produce exotic hybrids, however, existing data using photon beams are sparse. At Jefferson Laboratory, plans are underway by the GlueX Collaboration to use the coherent bremsstrahlung technique to produce a linearly polarized photon beam. A solenoid-based hermetic detector will be used to collect data on meson production and decays with statistics that will exceed existing photoproduction data by several orders of magnitude after the first year of running. In order to reach the ideal photon energy of 9 GeV required for these studies, the energy of the Jefferson Laboratory electron accelerator, CEBAF, will be doubled from its current maximum energy of 6 GeV to 12 GeV. The physics motivating the search and the status of the project are reviewed.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, HADRON05 Conferenc

Experimental Status of Exotic Mesons and the GlueX Experiment

One of the unanswered and most fundamental questions in physics regards the nature of the confinement mechanism of quarks and gluons in QCD. Exotic hybrid mesons manifest gluonic degrees of freedom and their spectroscopy will provide the data necessary to test assumptions in lattice QCD and the specific phenomenology leading to confinement. Within the past two decades a number of experiments have put forth tantalizing evidence for the existence of exotic hybrid mesons in the mass range below 2 GeV. This talk represents an overview of the available data and what has been learned. In looking toward the future, the GlueX experiment at Jefferson Laboratory represents a new initiative that will perform detailed spectroscopy of the light-quark meson spectrum. This experiment and its capabilities will be reviewed.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 2nd Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadron Physics GHP06, Nashville, TN (10/22-10/24/06

Rapid virological surveillance of community influenza infection in general practice

No abstract available