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Physics |
The goal of the GlueX experiment is to search for and study hybrid mesons. Hybrid mesons, and in particular exotic hybrid mesons, provide the ideal laboratory for testing QCD in the confinement regime since these mesons explicitly manifest the gluonic degrees of freedom. Photoproduction is expected to be particularly effective in producing exotic hybrids but there is little data on the photoproduction of light mesons. GlueX will use the coherent bremsstrahlung technique to produce a linearly polarized photon beam. A solenoid-based hermetic detector will be used to collected data on meson production and decays with statistics after the first year of running that will exceed the current photoproduction data in hand by several orders of magnitude. These data will also be used to study the spectrum of conventional mesons, including the poorly understood excited vector mesons and strangeonium. In order to reach the ideal photon energy of 9 GeV for this mapping of the exotic spectrum, 12 GeV electrons are required.