Speaker
Description
The spectroscopy of excited nucleons remains one of the outstanding challenges in hadron physics, with competing theoretical models predicting different numbers of states and level orderings. Cascade ((\Xi)) baryons provide an attractive complementary system for constraining these models. They share the same isospin ((I=1/2)) as the nucleon while containing two heavier strange quarks, thus simplifying theoretical and experimental analysis. Theoretical models predict a total of 44 cascade baryons below 2.5 GeV. Currently, only six cascade states have been assigned at least a three-star rating by the PDG, and the production mechanism of these baryons remains mostly elusive. Additionally, cascade spectroscopy is a promising tool to differentiate genuine quark states from hadronic molecules, since the line shape in various decay branches can be measured with unprecedented precision. This work focuses on the analysis of CLAS12 data collected at Jefferson Lab to study the production mechanisms and decays of excited cascade baryons that are poorly established or missing, with the aim of determining their branching ratios and quantum numbers. To address the substantial and complex background arising from out-of-time particles, a novel analysis technique based on multi-dimensional sequential sWeighting is introduced, allowing for a clean separation of genuine cascade signals from background contributions. The sensitivity of the same dataset to searches for multi-strange exotic states in both the meson and baryon sectors will also be investigated.