Accelerator facilities probing the physics of scales: the 12 GeV upgrade of CEBAF in search of 'Quark Confinement'

We will identify the various accelerator-based US facilities in operation and/or planned for exploring Nuclear/Particle Physics at different scales from the multibody Nucleon-Nucleon Force. Rare Nuclear Isotopes and Nuclear Astrophysics on one hand through facilities probing 'Hadronic Physics' deep inside a nucleon (such as the search for 'pentaquark' and strange matter) to colliders in search of 'new states' of nuclear matter (such as the 'quark-gluon plasma' or 'strongly interacting nuclear liquid'). In particular, we will explore in some depth the science behind the 'GlueX' experiment planned in Hall D of Jefferson Lab's upgraded 12 GeV Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). There, coherent Bremsstrahlung photons of 9 GeV energy, obtained from a continuous string of 12 GeV electrons stopped by a diamond crystal, will be used to photoexcite 'exotic' mesons where the degree of freedom of the strong gluonic force binding the quark-antiquark pair is excited. A careful partial wave analysis eliminating the vibrational and rotational 'quark' degrees of freedom of the 'di-quark' molecule and an analysis of the forbidden J'PC' quantum states will reveal the signal of new truly 'exotic' quantum states with pure gluonic information. The exotic meson spectroscopy will allow 'mapping the strong force' that confines quarks as a 'function of distance between quarks', with the search for a possible ultimate 'glueball' state within reach. The experiment will firmly establish QCD experimentally in the nonperturbative 'confinement regime', complementing the perturbative QCD established firmly in the regime of 'asymptotic freedom', recognized via the Nobel Prize in 2004. (author)