Department of Physics

elementary particle physics (theoretical)

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) describes the interactions between quarks and gluons, the building blocks of hadronic matter. When the idea of quarks was first introduced, the myriad mesons that had been discovered seemed to be described as bound states of a quark and antiquark. But as our notions of QCD have evolved it has become clear that other mesons must exist that have gluons as constituents as well. In fact it should be possible to have mesons with no quarks - just gluons. Collectively these new mesons are called 'gluonic excitations.' Our group leads a planned search for this new family of particles at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA. This involves upgrading the energy of the lab's electron accelerator, constructing a new photon beam line and construction of a new detector. We are also analyzing data collected in previous experiments to uncover possible evidence for these new states.