Observation of $\gamma p\to \Lambda \bar{\Lambda }p$ with GlueX at Jefferson Lab

Abstract

For the first time, baryon-antibaryon photoproduction in the reaction $\gamma p\to \Lambda \bar{\Lambda }p$ has been observed at photon energies from threshold near 4.9 GeV to 11.6 GeV. The measurements are in progress with the GlueX spectrometer in Hall D at Jefferson Lab. We describe here the apparatus and methods used to make these measurements and outline the physics goals of the work. Some of the newly-seen reaction phenomenology is presented.

From an invited talk to the "13th International Conference on Hypernuclear and Strange Particle Physics (HYP2018), 8 pages, 8 figures; replaced to update Acknowledgements