Nuclear Physics Seminars

One of the great mysteries of modern physics is the mechanism that confines quarks into hadrons. Quarks are bound together due to the strong interaction of gluons which themselves carry color charge. Although the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) describes the interaction, the solutions can only be approximated at low energies. Nevertheless colored gluons are expected to bind to each other and form flux tubes, which lattice QCD predicts will be observable in the particle spectrum as new excitations called hybrid mesons. We will describe the plans at Jefferson Lab to double the energy of the machine to 12 GeV, which will allow access these gluonic excitations experimentally, and describe the apparatus in the new Hall D which will be used to search for them.