Emergence of hadrons from color charge in QCD

The propagation of colored quarks through strongly interacting systems, and their subsequent evolution into color-singlet hadrons, are phenomena that showcase unique facets of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Medium-stimulated gluon bremsstrahlung, a fundamental QCD process, induces broadening of the transverse momentum of the parton, and creates partonic energy loss manifesting itself in experimental observables that are accessible in high energy interactions in hot and cold systems. The formation of hadrons, which is the dynamical enforcement of the QCD confinement principle, is very poorly understood on the basis of fundamental theory, although detailed models such as the Lund string model or cluster hadronization models can generally be tuned to capture the main features of hadronic final states. With the advent of the technical capability to study hadronic final states from lepton scattering with good particle identification and at high luminosity, a new opportunity has appeared. Study of the characteristics of parton propagation and hadron formation as they unfold within atomic nuclei are now being used to understand the coherence and spatial features of these processes and to refine new experimental tools that will be used in future experiments. Fixed-target data on nuclei with lepton and hadron beams, and collider experiments involving nuclei, all make essential contact with these topics and they elucidate different aspects of these same themes. In this paper, a survey of the most relevant recent data and its potential interpretation will be followed by descriptions of planned experiments at Jefferson Lab following the completion of the 12 GeV upgrade, and feasible measurements at a future Electron-Ion Collider.

Experimental Studies of Hadronization and Parton Propagation in the Space-Time Domain

Over the past decade, new data have become available from DESY, Jefferson Lab, Fermilab, and RHIC that connect to parton propagation and hadron formation. Semi-inclusive DIS on nuclei, the Drell-Yan reaction, and heavy-ion collisions all bring different kinds of information on parton propagation within a medium, while the most direct information on hadron formation comes from the DIS data. Over the next decade one can hope to begin to understand these data within a unified picture. We briefly survey the most relevant data and the common elements of the physics picture, then highlight the new Jefferson Lab data from CLAS, and close with prospects for the future.