Meson photoproduction from the nucleon at CLAS

Abstract

The excitation spectrum of the nucleon provides a stringent constraint on the dynamics and interactions of its internal constituents and therefore probes the mechanism of confinement in the light quark sector. Our detailed knowlege of this excitation spectrum is poor, with many predicted states not yet observed in experiment and many “established” states having poorly known properties. To address these shortcomings a worldwide effort is currently underway exploiting the latest generation of electron and photon beams in detailed studies of meson photoproduction from nucleon targets. A major contribution to this effort will come from the experimental programme at Jefferson Lab exploiting the frozen spin target (FROST) with the CLAS spectrometer. The status of this project will be presented along with preliminary results and analyses.