Lorentz violation and the electron-ion collider

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for detecting violations of Lorentz symmetry in unpolarized deep inelastic electron-proton scattering in the context of the future electron-ion collider. Simulated differential cross-section data are used to place expected bounds on a class of quark-sector coefficients for Lorentz violation that induce sidereal time dependence in the scattering cross section. We find that, with $100{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, the expected bounds are in the $10^{-5}-10^{-7}$ range and are roughly two orders of magnitude stronger than those that can be extracted from existing HERA data. We also discuss the possibility of extracting bounds on the remaining time-independent coefficients.

19 pages, 7 figures, matches the version published in Phys. Rev. D