Probing Nuclear Structure with Polarized Targets at Jefferson Lab

Polarized target technology underpins much of our understanding of the internal spin structure of the nucleon. The discovery of the spin puzzle at EMC in 1988 with a polarized solid target was made possible by decades of study into the polarization of materials, and the years since have seen intense, international effort to describe the nucleon's inner dynamics. Jefferson Lab has been at the forefront of this effort, probing nuclear structure on the precision frontier with first 4, then 6, and now 12 GeV electrons. Polarized solid and gas targets have been indispensable tools for leveraging spin dependence to reach new observables. In this talk, we will give an overview of Jefferson Lab's polarized target programs, introducing the methods for spin polarization, recapping their experimental use thus far, and looking forward to new measurements and new techniques in development.