Speaker
Description
The GlueX experiment has accumulated the largest available data set for photoproduction studies, enabling detailed investigations of strong-interaction dynamics and searches for new resonant states. We present data collected at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility using a linearly polarized photon beam, with a coherent peak near 9 GeV, incident on a liquid hydrogen target, and detected by the GlueX spectrometer. We focus on a survey of the largely unexplored reaction $\gamma p \rightarrow \omega K^{+}\Lambda$, which contains the vector-pseudoscalar $\omega K^{+}$ system, using the Phase-I and part of the Phase-II GlueX data set. This reaction provides a unique opportunity to study the production of strange mesons and baryons, with emphasis on searches for potential hybrid mesons in the $\omega K^{+}$ system, as well as strong-interaction dynamics in the presence of strangeness. We discuss the reconstruction and identification of this reaction and present a preliminary survey of the resulting mass spectra and differential cross sections.