Speaker
Description
This contribution presents a review of cold nuclear matter (CNM) effects in hadron–nucleus collisions, with a focus on hard probes such as Drell–Yan pairs, heavy flavor, and quarkonium production. By examining yield modifications as functions of transverse momentum and rapidity, these studies aim to disentangle key QCD mechanisms, including gluon saturation, nuclear PDFs, and parton energy loss, and to determine whether observed suppression patterns reflect universal features or process-dependent effects.
The future Electron–Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, together with its ePIC detector, will provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore these questions with high precision. Beyond its primary collider mission, the EIC should also be considered as a multi-purpose facility for the coming decades of nuclear physics, with the flexibility to support complementary modes of operation that broaden its scientific reach.
In this context, the potential of operating the EIC in a fixed-target mode is proposed [1]. Such a program would enable proton–nucleus and ion–nucleus collisions at low center-of-mass energies, complementary to the STAR fixed-target program and to the upcoming CBM experiment at FAIR. As discussed at the recent fixed-target workshop [2], this mode would significantly broaden the horizons of QCD studies at the EIC by covering a wide range of beam energies and target nuclei.
A fixed-target program at the EIC would also extend the capabilities of ePIC toward heavy-quark and quarkonium production at higher Bjorken-x, offering a unique opportunity to disentangle cold nuclear matter effects in this energy regime. Together, these studies provide a roadmap for interpreting future nuclear data and for using the EIC not only as a collider, but as a versatile facility to deepen our understanding of QCD in nuclear environments.
[1] F. Arleo, P. Caucal, A. Deshpande, J. M. Durham, G. M. Innocenti, J. Jalilian-Marian, A. Kusina, M. X. Liu, Y. Mehtar-Tani, C. J. Naïm, H. Paukkunen, S. Platchkov, F. Salazar, I. Vitev, and R. Vogt, “Nuclear Cold QCD: Review and Future Strategy,” arXiv:2506.17454, 2025.
[2] Exploring a Fixed-Target Program at the EIC, Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science workshop, available at: https://indico.cfnssbu.physics.sunysb.edu/event/496/
The work of C.-J. Naïm is supported by the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science and the Simons Foundation. R. Vogt is supported by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344, the LLNL-LDRD Program under Project No. 23-LW-036, and through the Topical Collaboration in Nuclear Theory on Heavy-Flavor Theory for QCD Matter under award no. DE-SC0023547.
| Is this an experimental talk? | No |
|---|---|
| Is this on behalf of a collaboration? | No |
| Are you willing to present as a poster if it is not selected for oral presentation? | Yes |