Speaker
Description
The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab probes the spectrum of light hadrons with a $6-12\text{ GeV}$ linearly polarized beam. We study the $\gamma p\to K_S K_S p$ channel at GlueX to investigate the production of light flavorless mesons with even spin, namely the $f$ and $a$ mesons. The $f_0$ states in the $1-2\text{ GeV}/c^2$ mass range are particularly interesting, as there are too many for them to all be $q\bar{q}$ mesons. One possible explanation is that these states mix with the lightest scalar glueball, which has the same quantum numbers as the $f_0$ mesons ($J^{PC}=0^{++}$) and is predicted by lattice simulations to be in the same mass range. The GlueX data from this channel that will be shown contains evidence of multiple overlapping states. We decompose the spin states using two methods of partial-wave analysis, mass-independent amplitudes and a K-matrix model. This analysis uses highest-statistics dataset for this channel in photoproduction to date, even when restricted to the most-polarized energy range of $\sim8-9\text{ GeV}$.
