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American Physics Society 

Abstract A workshop on The Next Generation Gamma-Ray Source sponsored by the Office of Nuclear Physics at the Department of Energy, was held November 17-19, 2016 in Bethesda, Maryland. The goals of the workshop were to identify basic and applied research opportunities at the frontiers of nuclear physics that would be made possible by the beam capabilities of an advanced laser Compton beam facility. To anchor the scientific vision to realistically achievable beam specifications using proven technologies, the workshop brought together experts in the fields of electron accelerators, lasers, and optics to examine the technical options for achieving the beam specifications required by the most compelling parts of the proposed research programs. An international assembly of participants included current and prospective γ -ray beam users, accelerator and light-source physicists, and federal agency program managers. Sessions were organized to foster interactions between the beam users and facility developers, allowing for information sharing and mutual feedback between the two groups. The workshop findings and recommendations are summarized in this whitepaper. 

The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab studies photoproduction of mesons using linearly polarized 8.5GeV photons impinging on a hydrogen target which is contained within a detector with near-complete coverage for charged and neutral particles. We present measurements of spin-density matrix elements for the photoproduction of the vector meson 𝜌(770). The statistical precision achieved exceeds that of previous experiments for polarized photoproduction in this energy range by orders of magnitude. We confirm a high degree of 𝑠-channel helicity conservation at small squared four-momentum transfer 𝑡 and are able to extract the 𝑡 dependence of natural- and unnatural-parity exchange contributions to the production process in detail. We confirm the dominance of natural-parity exchange over the full 𝑡 range. We also find that helicity amplitudes in which the helicity of the incident photon and the photoproduced 𝜌⁡(770) differ by two units are negligible for −𝑡<0.5GeV2/𝑐2.