Ruling out Color Transparency in quasi-elastic $^{12}$C$(e,e’p)$ up to $Q^2 = 14$ (GeV/c)$^2$

Color transparency (CT) is a fundamental phenomenon of QCD postulating that at high momentum transfer, one can preferentially measure hadrons that fluctuate to a small color neutral transverse size in the nucleus, and final state interactions within the nuclear medium are suppressed. This talk will discuss the recent quasi-elastic $^{12}$C$(e, e’p)$ scattering measurement in Hall C at momentum transfer squared $Q^2 = 8, 9.4,11.4,$ and 14.2 (GeV/c)$^2$, the highest ever achieved to date. Nuclear transparency for this reaction was extracted by comparing the measured yield to that expected from a plane-wave impulse approximation calculation without any final state interactions. The measured transparency was observed to be independent of $Q^2$, ruling out the quantum chromodynamics effect of color transparency at such momentum scales. These new results impose strict constraints on models of color transparency for protons.