Baryon Spectroscopy via Vector Meson and Hyperon Production

Catholic University Of America, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The NSF proposal enables the PI to continue and expand his research activities at Jefferson Lab, Newport News, VA, in collaboration with the nuclear physics group at CUA. The research program concentrates on those experiments that are expected to have a major impact in our understanding of the spectrum of excited nucleons and the constituent quark models. Various model calculations show that the photoproduction of vector mesons and hyperons is most sensitive in the search for "missing resonances", i.e. excited nucleon states which are predicted by constituent quark models but haven't been observed experimentally. The experimental program covers analysis projects as well as the design of new instrumentations, especially a frozen spin target and highly segmented start counters, for polarization experiments in Jefferson Lab's Hall B, the only place where such experiments can be performed.