QCD confinement and the GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab

Abstract

An understanding of the confinement mechanism in QCD requires a detailed mapping of the spectrum of hybrid mesons. Understanding confinement means understanding the role of gluons and it is in hybrid mesons that the gluonic degrees of freedom are manifest. High statistics searches for such states with π and p beams have resulted in some tantalizing signals. There is good reason to expect beams of photons to yield hybrid mesons with JPC quantum numbers not possible within the conventional picture of mesons as qq̄ bound states. Meager data currently exist on the photoproduction of light quark mesons. 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.