The Meson Spectrum from GlueX

QCD is the fundamental theory for strong interactions describing bound states of quarks and gluons called hadrons. The discovery in the past decade of new kinds of hadrons that did not fit to expectations created new momentum of interest in the field of meson spectroscopy. These so-called exotic states are deeply connected to phenomenology of QCD and offer the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of QCD bound states. An important part of 12 GeV program at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is the GlueX experiment, designed to produce and study many of those exotic sates. The very exciting physics of GlueX will be further enhanced by a novel type of Cherenkov detector called the DIRC, which will be used to tag strange decays of the new exotic states.The GlueX experiment has started data taking in late 2014 with its first commissioning beam. All of the detector systems are now performing at or near design specifications and events are being fully reconstructed.