1 PLANNING A NEW GENERATION OF MULTIPARTICLE PHASE SHIFT ANALYSES IN PERIPHERAL REACTIONS GEOFFREY FOX * Indiana University, Computer Science, Informatics and Physics, Community Grid Computing Laboratory, 501 N Morton Suite 224, Bloomington IN 47404 We discuss partial wave analysis of meson resonances with emphasis on the issues relevant to the GlueX experiment at the upgraded Jefferson Laboratory accelerator. We describe the challenges in the analysis coming from the need to build theoretical models to support partial wave analysis of the experimental data. These difficulties have dogged previous experiments of this type but are counterbalanced by improved Grid-based computing environments and by the high quality of the new data. 1. Introduction We discuss some of the phenomenological and computing principles that would be relevant in analyzing meson photoproduction with incident photon energies of about 10 GeV as envisioned in the GlueX experiment [1]. Thus we mix the old and the new; the needed understanding [2] of hadronic reactions with Regge poles, final state interactions plus S-Matrix theory and folklore hasn’t changed much in 30 years. On the other hand, the Grid-based computing model [3] is still being developed with the imminent deluge of data from the LHC at CERN as a major driving force [4]. There is little doubt that the seemingly tranquil physics issues will have a far greater impact on the GlueX experiment than the “hotter” information technology (Grid). However Grids may help to produce a more powerful analysis environment than for previous such experiments and this combined with the much higher statistics and quality data will allow a more thoughtful and careful analysis of the difficult physics problems. Conversely the better data will in fact require such an improved analysis. These general issues are discussed in Sec. 2 where the next section investigates the various physics uncertainties. Sec. 4 discusses the current status of Grid and Web service technologies and their application to GlueX. The final section brings the threads together with a combined physics and computing summary. * Web page at http://www.infomall.org and email gcf@indiana.edu