Speaker
Matthew Lamont
(BNL)
Description
Much information was gained in the past on the structure of the nucleon, there is little data on the structure of the nucleus, particularly at small-to-intermediate x. The construction of an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will allow the exploration of the nucleus across a wide region in x. Not only will nuclear PDFs be extracted, but the high statistics data generated will allow the study of the nucleus in fine detail. At high-x, the fragmentation of fast-moving partons in a nuclear environment will be investigated, something which has particular resonance to jet studies at RHIC and the LHC. At small-x, nucleon data have shown that gluons dominate at intermediate-to-small x. Indeed, it is believed that at some point, this growth is so large that it cannot grow any larger and it will saturate. The studies of saturation in e+p collisions require much high energies than those studied to date. However, the universality of this behaviour is expected to be exhibited in nuclear collisions at much higher values of x and at energies available at an EIC. Comparison to theoretical models have shown that diffractive collisions, in particular, will give clear signals of gluon saturation.
In this talk I will present the current status of the physics capabilities of e+A collisions at an EIC as outlined in the EIC White Paper [1].
[1] A. Accardi at al, http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.1701 (2012)
Author
Matthew Lamont
(BNL)
