The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Jefferson Lab is a unique new tool for the study of atomic nuclei that can provide intense, cw beams of polarized electrons with energies of up to 5.7 GeV. The accelerator began delivering beam for physics research in October 1995, and has been in full operation since December 1998. CEBAF supports a broad range of nuclear physics research aimed at addressing key questions in the field, such as: how nucleons are constructed from the quarks and gluons of QCD; how the strong force arises from the underlying QCD quark-quark interaction; and where the conventional description of nuclei based on nucleons interacting via the nuclear force breaks down. The broad outlines of this research program will be reviewed briefly, and examples presented from the first round of experiments. Looking to the future (and the upcoming NSAC Long Range Plan) the Jefferson Lab community is proposing an upgrade of the accelerator to 12 GeV and an associated evolution of the experimental equipment. The science motivating the upgrade includes: a major new initiative aimed at the experimental observation of the QCD flux tubes believed to cause quark confinement; detailed studies of the quark and gluon structure of the nucleons through measurements of deep inelastic scattering in the region where their basic three-quark structure dominates and through measurements of deep exclusive scattering cross sections that will provide direct access to information on the correlations among the quarks; and important new thrusts in our present research program, generally involving the extension of measurements to substantially higher momentum transfers. This research program will be reviewed and the upgrade project will be presented.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule