Abstract

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. © 2009 Elsevier B.V.