In the quark model, meson states consisting of a quark/anti-quark pair must obey Poincaré symmetry. As a result of that symmetry, for meson total angular momentum J, parity P, and charge conjugation symmetry C, states with JPC= 0--, 0+-, 1-+, 2+-, 3-+, 4+-, … should not be observed. A meson observed experimentally with such quantum numbers would indicate a so-called “exotic” meson state. Exotic mesons can be multi-quark states like tetraquarks, a combination of two or more gluons known as glueballs, or a hybrid meson (qqg). Theories have suggested that three possible exotic meson states with the 1-+ quantum number: π1, η1, and η‘1,. However, no conclusive evidence for the existence of these three exotic states has been observed. This research will look for new states that decay to K* K final states with an emphasis on exotic mesons. An analysis of K+ K- π0 final states will be presented, where a restriction on the K - π0 invariant mass yields an unexpected enhancement in the K+ K- π0 spectrum.

In nuclear physics, there is a discrepancy between theory and experiment concerning the number of existing nucleon resonances. Current models predict far more states than have been observed. In particular, few searches have found excited nucleon resonances with energies above 2.2 GeV in the K Lambda channel. To investigate high-mass nucleon resonances, efficiency-corrected yields of the reaction ep --> e K+ Lambda(1520) --> e K+ K- p in the center-of-mass energy range 2.1-4.5 GeV are constructed utilizing Jefferson Lab's CLAS12 detector. This paper presents the results of an analysis searching for high-mass nucleon resonances in the K Lambda channel between 2.1-4.5 GeV.