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

First Measurement of Transferred Polarization in the Exclusive e⃗ p→e′K+Λ⃗Reaction

The first measurements of the transferred polarization for the exclusive e⃗ p→e′K+Λ⃗ reaction have been performed at Jefferson Laboratory using the CLAS spectrometer. A 2.567 GeV beam was used to measure the hyperon polarization over Q2 from 0.3 to 1.5   (GeV/c)2, W from 1.6 to 2.15 GeV, and over the full K+ center-of-mass angular range. Comparison with predictions of hadrodynamic models indicates strong sensitivity to the underlying resonance contributions. A nonrelativistic quark-model interpretation of our data suggests that the ss¯ quark pair is produced with spins predominantly antialigned. Implications for the validity of the most widely used quark-pair creation operator are discussed

Beam-recoil polarization transfer in the nucleon resonance region in the exclusive e→p→e′K+Λ→ and e→p→e′K+Σ→0 reactions at the CLAS spectrometer

Beam-recoil transferred polarizations for the exclusive e→p→e′K+Λ→,Σ→0 reactions have been measured using the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility\u27s large acceptance spectrometer (CLAS) at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. New measurements have been completed at beam energies of 4.261 and 5.754 GeV that span a range of momentum transfer Q2 from 0.7 to 5.4 GeV2, invariant energy W from 1.6 to 2.6 GeV, and the full center-of-mass angular range of the K+ meson. These new data add to the existing CLAS K+Λ measurements at 2.567 GeV, and provide the first-ever data for the K+Σ0 channel in electroproduction. Comparisons of the data with several theoretical models are used to study the sensitivity to s-channel resonance contributions and the underlying reaction mechanism. Interpretations within two semiclassical partonic models are made to probe the underlying reaction mechanism and the ss¯ quark-pair creation dynamics

Unitary coupled-channels model for three-mesons decays of heavy mesons

A unitary coupled-channels model is presented for investigating the decays of heavy mesons and excited meson states into three light pseudoscalar mesons. The model accounts for the three-mesons final state interactions in the decay processes, as required by both the three-body and two-body unitarity conditions. In the absence of the Z-diagram mechanisms that are necessary consequences of the three-body unitarity, our decay amplitudes are reduced to a form similar to those used in the so-called isobar-model analysis. We apply our coupled-channels model to the three-pions decays of a1(1260), pi2(1670), pi2(2100), and D0 mesons, and show that the Z-diagram mechanisms can contribute to the calculated Dalitz plot distributions by as much as 30% in magnitudes in the regions where f0(600), rho(770), and f2(1270) dominate the distributions. Also, by fitting to the same Dalitz plot distributions, we demonstrate that the decay amplitudes obtained with the unitary model and the isobar model can be rather different, particularly in the phase that plays a crucial role in extracting the CKM CP-violating phase from the data of B meson decays. Our results indicate that the commonly used isobar model analysis must be extended to account for the final state interactions required by the three-body unitarity to reanalyze the three-mesons decays of heavy mesons, thereby exploring hybrid or exotic mesons, and signatures of physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. Version to appear in PR

Separated structure functions for exclusive K+Lambda and K+Sigma(0) electroproduction at 5.5 GeV measured with CLAS

We report measurements of the exclusive electroproduction of K+Lambda and K+Sigma(0) final states from an unpolarized proton target using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The separated structure functions sigma(U), sigma(LT), sigma(T) T, and sigma(LT\u27) were extracted from the Phi-dependent differential cross sections acquired with a longitudinally polarized 5.499 GeV electron beam. The data span a broad range of momentum transfers Q(2) from 1.4 to 3.9GeV(2), invariant energy W from threshold to 2.6GeV, and nearly the full center-of-mass angular range of the kaon. The separated structure functions provide an unprecedented data sample, which, in conjunction with other meson photo-and electroproduction data, will help to constrain the higher-level analyses being performed to search for missing baryon resonances. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.87.02520