Photoproduction of K_S Pairs at GlueX

The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab probes the spectrum of light hadrons with a 6-12 GeV linearly polarized beam. We study the K_SK_S channel at GlueX to investigate the production of light flavorless mesons with even spin, namely the f and a mesons. The f₀ states in the 1-2 GeV/c² mass range are particularly interesting, as there are too many for them to all be qq-bar mesons. One possible explanation is that these states mix with the lightest scalar glueball, which has the same quantum numbers as the f₀ 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 several methods of partial-wave analysis, including both mass-independent amplitudes and a K-matrix model. We will also present methods of background subtraction and model selection that lead to the highest-statistics dataset for this channel in photoproduction to date.