Nuclear physics with a medium-energy Electron-Ion Collider

Abstract

A polarized ep/eA collider (Electron-Ion Collider, or EIC) with variable center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) ~ 20-70 GeV and a luminosity ~ 10^{34} cm^{-2} s^{-1} would be uniquely suited to address several outstanding questions of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and the microscopic structure of hadrons and nuclei: (i) the three-dimensional structure of the nucleon in QCD (sea quark and gluon spatial distributions, orbital motion, polarization, correlations); (ii) the fundamental color fields in nuclei (nuclear parton densities, shadowing, coherence effects, color transparency); (iii) the conversion of color charge to hadrons (fragmentation, parton propagation through matter, in-medium jets). We briefly review the conceptual aspects of these questions and the measurements that would address them, emphasizing the qualitatively new information that could be obtained with the collider. Such a medium-energy EIC could be realized at Jefferson Lab after the 12 GeV Upgrade (MEIC), or at Brookhaven National Lab as the low-energy stage of eRHIC.

9 pages, 5 figures. Mini-review compiled in preparation for the MEIC Conceptual Design Report, Jefferson Lab (2011)

References in corpus (10)

• The Color Glass Condensate
• Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Transverse-Spin and Transverse-Momentum Effects in High-Energy Processes
• Azimuthal and Single Spin Asymmetries in Hard Scattering Processes
• Spin Structure of the Nucleon - Status and Recent Results
• Leading twist nuclear shadowing phenomena in hard processes with nuclei
• Measurement of Parton Distributions of Strange Quarks in the Nucleon from Charged-Kaon Production in Deep-Inelastic Scattering on the Deuteron
• Collider Physics at HERA
• Transverse Momentum Dependent Parton Distribution/Fragmentation Functions at an Electron-Ion Collider
• QCD Spin Physics: Partonic Spin Structure of the Nucleon

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Diquark Correlations in Hadron Physics: Origin, Impact and Evidence
• Intrinsic transverse momentum and parton correlations from dynamical chiral symmetry breaking
• Impact of hadronic and nuclear corrections on global analysis of spin-dependent parton distributions
• Constraints on spin-dependent parton distributions at large x from global QCD analysis
• $\rho$ meson unpolarized generalized parton distributions with a light-front constituent quark model
• Chiral dynamics and peripheral transverse densities
• Left-right spin asymmetry in $\ell N^{\uparrow }\to hX$
• Electron-deuteron deep-inelastic scattering with spectator nucleon tagging and final-state interactions at intermediate x
• Neutron spin structure with polarized deuterons and spectator proton tagging at EIC
• Hadron mass corrections in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering
• Pre-Town Meeting on Spin Physics at an Electron-Ion Collider
• Impact of nuclear dependence of R=σ_L/σ_T on antishadowing in nuclear structure functions
• Electron-deuteron DIS with spectator tagging at EIC: Development of theoretical framework
• Determination of neutron fracture functions from a global QCD analysis of leading neutron production at HERA
• Heavy quark production at an Electron-Ion Collider
• QCD Evolution Workshop: Introduction
• Probing charged lepton flavor violation with a positron beam at CEBAF (JLAB)
• SPIN Effects, QCD, and Jefferson Laboratory with 12 GeV electrons
• Sea quark transverse momentum distributions and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking
• Transverse-Distance Dependent Parton Densities in the Large-$x$ Regime
• Transverse charge and magnetization densities in the nucleon's chiral periphery