The GlueX DIRC Project

The GlueX experiment was designed to search for and study the pattern of gluonic excitations in the meson spectrum produced through photoproduction reactions at a new tagged photon beam facility in Hall D at Jefferson Laboratory. The particle identification capabilities of the GlueX experiment will be enhanced by constructing a DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detector, utilizing components of the decommissioned BaBar DIRC. The DIRC will allow systematic studies of kaon final states that are essential for inferring the quark flavor content of both hybrid and conventional mesons. The design for the GlueX DIRC is presented, including the new expansion volumes that are currently under development.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

GlueX overview: status and some future plans

The GlueX experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) has started data taking in late 2014 with its first commissioning beam. All of the detector systems are now performing at or near design specifications and events are being fully reconstructed. Linearly-polarized photons were successfully produced through coherent bremsstrahlung. An upgrade of the particle identification (PID) system with a GlueX DIRC detector, planned for 2018, will allow identification of final state kaons. The construction of the GlueX DIRC has already started. One of the plans for GlueX is to study properties of short-range correlations (SRC) in nuclei, which will shed new light on the quark-gluon structure of bound nucleons

Simulation, reconstruction, and design optimization for the PANDA Barrel DIRC

The PANDA experiment at FAIR will study fundamental questions of strong interaction with high precision. Effcient particle identification for a wide momentum range and the full solid angle is required for successful reconstruction of the benchmark channels of the broad PANDA physics program. For this purpose a compact ring imaging Cherenkov detector is being developed for the barrel region of the PANDA detector. The concept and the baseline design of the PANDA Barrel DIRC were inspired by the BABAR DIRC and improved with important modifications, like fast photon timing, a compact expansion volume, and focusing optics. The required detector resolution was defined based on the PANDA PID specifications using the phase space distributions of the final state kaons produced in selected benchmark channels. To optimize the PANDA Barrel DIRC design in terms of performance and cost the baseline detector geometry and a number of design options were implemented in the simulation. The key options include the radiator dimensions, two types of expansion volume shapes, and a variety of focusing systems. The performance of the detector designs was quantified in terms of single photon Cherenkov angle resolution and photon yield. It was found that the number of radiators can be reduced by about 40% without loss in performance. A compound spherical lens without air gap was found to be a promising focusing system. An optimized Barrel DIRC design meeting the PID requirements includes three radiator bars per at section, the compound lens without air gap, a compact prism-shaped EV, and a total of 192 Microchannel-Plate PMTs as photosensors. The number of electronic channels can be halved without loss in performance by combining two neighbouring pixels. For such a detector design the total cost will be significantly reduced compared to the baseline version while still meeting or exceeding the PANDA PID performance goals

GlueX overview: status and some future plans

The GlueX experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) has started data taking in late 2014 with its first commissioning beam. All of the detector systems are now performing at or near design specifications and events are being fully reconstructed. Linearly-polarized photons were successfully produced through coherent bremsstrahlung. An upgrade of the particle identification (PID) system with a GlueX DIRC detector, planned for 2018, will allow identification of final state kaons. The construction of the GlueX DIRC has already started. One of the plans for GlueX is to study properties of short-range correlations (SRC) in nuclei, which will shed new light on the quark-gluon structure of bound nucleons

Exclusive studies on short range correlations in nuclei

Short Range Correlations (SRC) are brief fluctuations of high relative momentum nucleon pairs. Properties of SRC have important consequences for nuclear physics, high energy physics, atomic physics, and astrophysics. SRC pairs form some of the densest states of cold matter achievable on Earth, making them an ideal system to study the partonic and nucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclear systems. Hard exclusive breakup reactions, where high-energy probes scatter on SRC pairs, are used to study such properties of SRC pairs as isospin decomposition, nuclear mass and asymmetry dependence, c.m. momentum distribution. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) plays a key role in the SRC program. CLAS (CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer), located in Hall B at JLab, has almost 4π coverage and is capable of measuring exclusive reactions of the type A(e, e’pp). We will discuss the recent experimental results from JLab and future experiments planned at JLab as well as at JINR

Exclusive studies on short range correlations in nuclei

Short Range Correlations (SRC) are brief fluctuations of high relative momentum nucleon pairs. Properties of SRC have important consequences for nuclear physics, high energy physics, atomic physics, and astrophysics. SRC pairs form some of the densest states of cold matter achievable on Earth, making them an ideal system to study the partonic and nucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclear systems. Hard exclusive breakup reactions, where high-energy probes scatter on SRC pairs, are used to study such properties of SRC pairs as isospin decomposition, nuclear mass and asymmetry dependence, c.m. momentum distribution. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) plays a key role in the SRC program. CLAS (CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer), located in Hall B at JLab, has almost 4π coverage and is capable of measuring exclusive reactions of the type A(e, e’pp). We will discuss the recent experimental results from JLab and future experiments planned at JLab as well as at JINR

Beam asymmetry Σ for the photoproduction of η and η ′ mesons at E γ = 8.8 GeV

© 2019 American Physical Society. We report on the measurement of the beam asymmetry ς for the reactions γ - p→pη and γ - p→pη′ from the GlueX experiment using an 8.2-8.8-GeV linearly polarized tagged photon beam incident on a liquid hydrogen target in Hall D at Jefferson Laboratory. These measurements are made as a function of momentum transfer -t with significantly higher statistical precision than our earlier η measurements and are the first measurements of η′ in this energy range. We compare the results to theoretical predictions based on t-channel quasiparticle exchange. We also compare the ratio of ςη to ςη′ to these models as this ratio is predicted to be sensitive to the amount of ss exchange in the production. We find that photoproduction of both η and η′ is dominated by natural parity exchange with little dependence on -t

Measurement of the photon beam asymmetry in γ ⃗ p → K + Σ 0 at E γ = 8.5 GeV

© 2020 American Physical Society. We report measurements of the photon beam asymmetry ς for the reaction γ - p→K+ς0(1193) using the GlueX spectrometer in Hall D at Jefferson Lab. Data were collected by using a linearly polarized photon beam in the energy range of 8.2-8.8 GeV incident on a liquid hydrogen target. The beam asymmetry ς was measured as a function of the Mandelstam variable t, and a single value of ς was extracted for events produced in the u channel. These are the first exclusive measurements of the photon beam asymmetry ς for the reaction in this energy range. For the t channel, the measured beam asymmetry is close to unity over the t range studied, -t=(0.1-1.4)(GeV/c)2, with an average value of ς=1.00±0.05. This agrees with theoretical models that describe the reaction via the natural-parity exchange of the K∗(892) Regge trajectory. A value of ς=0.41±0.09 is obtained for the u channel integrated up to -u=2.0 (GeV/c)2

First Measurement of Near-Threshold J / ψ Exclusive Photoproduction off the Proton

© 2019 American Physical Society. We report on the measurement of the γp→J/ψp cross section from Eγ=11.8 GeV down to the threshold at 8.2 GeV using a tagged photon beam with the GlueX experiment. We find that the total cross section falls toward the threshold less steeply than expected from two-gluon exchange models. The differential cross section dσ/dt has an exponential slope of 1.67±0.39 GeV-2 at 10.7 GeV average energy. The LHCb pentaquark candidates Pc+ can be produced in the s channel of this reaction. We see no evidence for them and set model-dependent upper limits on their branching fractions B(Pc+→J/ψp) and cross sections σ(γp→Pc+)×B(Pc+→J/ψp)

Experimental Study of Cold Dense Nuclear Matter

The fundamental theory of nuclear interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), operates in terms of quarks and gluons at higher resolution. At low resolution the relevant degrees of freedom are nucleons. Two-nucleon Short-Range Correlations (SRC) help to interconnect these two descriptions. SRCs are temporary fluctuations of strongly interacting close pairs of nucleons. The distance between the two nucleons is comparable to their radii and their relative momenta are larger than the fermi sea level. According to the electron scattering experiments held in the last decade, SRCs have far-reaching impacts on many-body systems, the nucleon-nucleon interactions, and nuclear substructure. The modern experiments with ion beams and cryogenic liquid hydrogen target make it possible to study properties of the nuclear fragments after quasi-elastic knockout of a single nucleon or an SRC pair. Here we review the status and perspectives of the SRC program in so-called inverse kinematics at JINR (Dubna, Russia). The first SRC experiment at the BM@N spectrometer (2018) with 4 GeV/c/nucleon carbon beam has shown that detection of an intact 11B nucleus after interaction selects out the quasi-elastic knockout reaction with minimal contribution of initial- and final-state interactions. Also, 25 events of SRC-breakups showed agreement in SRC properties as known from electron beam experiments. The analysis of the second measurement of SRC at BM@N held in 2022 with an improved setup is currently ongoing. The SRC project at JINR moved to a new experimental area in 2023, where the next measurement is being planned in terms of experimental setup and physics goals