Gluonic Excitations, the Key to Understanding Confinement

Dr. George Lolos
Department of Physics
University of Regina
Saskatchewan, Canada

Quark confinement remains an experimental fact without well understood theoretical foundations.  Several phenomenological models attempt to explain confinement within the concept of gluon flux tubes.  Lattice QCD also lends support to such gluonic field geometries.  A direct consequence of both phenomenology and Lattice QCD is the formation of exotic states of matter, such as glueballs (pure glue) and hybrid (quark and glue) states.  The main scientific objective of GlueX/Hall D - within an energy upgraded Jefferson Lab - is the production and spectroscopy of exotic hybrid mesons to test and constrain the theories of confinement, as one of the remaining fundamental challenges to QCD.