Chasing QCD Signatures in Nuclei Using Color Coherence Phenomena

Abstract

Over the last few decades, several experiments have used atomic nuclei as unique laboratories to probe the internal structure of the strongly interacting particles, namely hadrons. Indeed, the nucleus could be used as a revealing medium of the time evolution of elementary configurations of the hadron wave function. One of the ordinary approaches used to probe this picture involves searching for the onset of various phenomena which are naturally predicted by Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. One such phenomenon is the color transparency (CT), which refers to the production and propagation of a small size hadron-like configuration that, under specific conditions, stays intact in a transparent nuclear medium. In this paper, I will briefly review the status of the experimental search for CT effects and highlight the upcoming Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) 12 GeV experiment that will study CT at higher momentum transfer using the CLAS12 spectrometer.

Keywords

• QCD in nuclei
• color coherence
• small size configurations
• nuclear transparency