J/ψ Photoproduction near threshold with CLAS12*

One of the objectives of nuclear physics is to understand how quarks and gluons interact to form a hadron.  For decades, electron scattering has been used to study the distribution of charge and magnetization in the nucleon.  Even though electric and magnetic form factors have been measured, experimental study of the gluonic form factor of the proton is lacking.
J/$\psi$ photoproduction near threshold is sensitive to the distribution of color charge in the proton.  There are wealth of data on J/ψ photoproduction at high energies, but no data exist at photon energies below 11 GeV.  

With available beam energies up to 11 GeV from CEBAF at Jefferson Lab, the CLAS12 detector is well suited to study J/ψ photoproduction near threshold.  The reaction (γ p -> l⁺l^-p') will be studied in the untagged photoproduction regime.  In this talk, we present the first look at the data collected during the first physics run of CLAS12 with a 10.6 GeV electron beam impinging on a liquid Hydrogen target.  Analysis details will be discussed, including particle identification and event selection for quasi-real photoproduction.