Study of photonuclear reactions in JLab Hall D.*

Photonuclear reactions using real photons provide a unique probe for fundamental aspects of QCD in the nuclear medium. The experiment E12- 19-003 was conducted at Jefferson lab in the fall of 2021 using a real photon beam from a 10.9 GeV electron beam on liquid helium, deuterium, and carbon targets using standard GlueX detector configuration. In this experiment, we use photonuclear reactions such as the photoproduction of the rho meson to study the structure of photons, looking for signatures of the transition from hadronic to partonic degrees of freedom. We also search for the signature of a phenomenon predicted by QCD called color transparency. This presentation will provide an overview of the analysis and preliminary results.