Research Interests
Quark interaction physics explores sub-atomic particle systems at the boundary between the quark-gluon and meson-baryon descriptions of matter. The field addresses questions that, as a practical matter, do not require the highest beam energies or luminosities, but do call for high-precision measurements using specialized equipment.
Currently, my main area of work is in the electromagnetic production of strange particles (kaons and hyperons). The production of strange-quark pairs via the well-known electromagnetic interaction gives us an avenue for refining our knowledge of baryon resonances, coupling constants, and polarization observables; the results are compared with modern quark models and with unitarized chiral perturbation theory. This work is being done at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLAB). More exactly, my experimental work is done using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) in Hall B and using the GlueX detector (GLUEX) in Hall D at Jefferson Lab.