K S Photoproduction on the Neutron within the Resonance Region

QCD-based models predict many N* states that decay through modes that have yet to be measured or precisely identified. These decay mechanisms give insight into the underlying symmetries of the excited-baryon states. There are competing models for the quark symmetries and dynamics ranging from preferentially paired-quark distributions to hybrid gluonic excitations. Measurement of the differential cross section and singleand double-polarization observables provide strong constraints on identifying the N* excitation spectrum. In this paper, we report preliminary differential cross-section measurements of the γD → KSΛ(p) reaction employing a circularlypolarized photon beam onto unpolarized LD2. The energy of the photon beam ranged from 1.3 to 2.65 GeV, which spans from threshold to the resonance regimes. The finalstate particles were used to reconstruct the missing mass of the spectator proton. The yield of this missing mass was then used for the determination of the differential cross section. We observe an increase of cross section in the central cms region for photon energies of 1.9 to 2.2 GeV. We regard this work on the KSΛ energy-dependent differential cross section as the first necessary step in identifying the underlying physics in the resonance regime. The work will form the foundation for further studies in extracting the polarization observables for circularlyand linearly-polarized photons from our analyzed dataset, which was taken by the CLAS detector in Hall B of Jefferson Lab in 2006 and 2007.