GlueX

GlueX is a particle physics experiment located at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) accelerator. Its primary purpose is to understand the nature of confinement in quantum chromodynamics by mapping the spectrum of exotic mesons generated by the excitation of the gluonic field binding the quarks. If successful, GlueX would be the first experiment to discover such exotic mesons, which have never before been observed. The experiment will be able to probe new areas by using photoproduction (that is, the scattering of a real photon on a nucleon) to produce exotic states. The GlueX detector was installed in the new Hall D (the fourth such hall at JLab) as part of the accelerator's upgrade to 12 GeV energy. GlueX began its first commissioning run in 2014, and first received 12 GeV electrons in 2015, the highest energy available at the CEBAF accelerator.