Jefferson Lab at 12 GeV: The Science Program

Abstract

Jefferson Lab's upgrade of its Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) has recently been completed. The project involved an upgrade of the accelerator to achieve a maximum beam energy of 12 GeV and the construction of a fourth end station, Experimental Hall D, as well as new detector equipment for two of the three existing halls (A, B, and C). A broad experimental program has been developed to map the nucleon's intrinsic quark distributions in transverse space and in longitudinal momentum through measurements of deeply exclusive and semi-inclusive processes, and to probe color confinement by studying the spectrum of hadrons with active gluon degrees of freedom in the wave function. Other programs include the forward parton distribution function at large quark momentum fraction x, the quark and gluon polarized distribution functions, measurements of electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon ground state and of nucleon resonance transitions at short distances, and the exploration of physics beyond the Standard Model in high-precision parity-violating processes and in the search for signals of dark matter. The higher beam energy is also suitable for exploration of quark hadronization properties using the nucleus as a laboratory. This review highlights major areas of hadron and nuclear science that will be the focus of the first 5 years of operation.