Studies of angular distributions in meson photoproduction at GlueX

 

The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab has been designed to search for exotic hybrid mesons. One crucial element of this search is the study of angular distributions in the production and decay of mesons. A linearly polarized photon beam is incident on a liquid hydrogen target. Charged and neutral particles from the decay of photoproduced mesons are detected in the almost hermetic GlueX detector. We will first explain the design of the detector and then the significance of angular distributions to the extraction of the physics. We will conclude by showing some systematic studies with emphasis on detector calibration and performance.