Abstract.This White Paper presents the science case of an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), focused on the structure and interactions of gluon-dominated matter, with the intent to articulate it to the broader nuclear science community. It was commissioned by the managements of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) with the objective of presenting a summary of scientific opportunities and goals of the EIC as a follow-up to the 2007 NSAC Long Range plan. This document is a culmination of a community-wide effort in nuclear science following a series of workshops on EIC physics over the past decades and, in particular, the focused ten-week program on “Gluons and quark sea at high energies” at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Fall 2010. It contains a brief description of a few golden physics measurements along with accelerator and detector concepts required to achieve them. It has been benefited profoundly from inputs by the users’ communities of BNL and JLab. This White Paper offers the promise to propel the QCD science program in the US, established with the CEBAF accelerator at JLab and the RHIC collider at BNL, to the next QCD frontier.

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Electron Ion Collider: The next QCD frontier

Science Requirements and Detector Concepts for the Electron-Ion Collider

We present an overview of the results obtained in pPb and PbPb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider during Run 1. We first discuss the results for global characteristics: cross sections, hadron multiplicities, azimuthal asymmetries, correlations at low transverse momentum, hadrochemistry, and femtoscopy. We then review hard and electroweak probes: particles with high transverse momentum, jets, heavy quarks, quarkonia, electroweak bosons and high transverse momentum photons, low transverse momentum photons and dileptons, and ultraperipheral collisions. We mainly focus on the experimental results, and present very briefly the main current theoretical explanations.

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Heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider: a review of the results from Run 1

We analyze the breaking of the Wandzura--Wilczek relation for the g_2 structure function, emphasizing its connection with transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions. We find that the relation is broken by two distinct twist-3 terms, and clarify how these can be separated in measurements of double-spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering. Through a quantitative analysis of available g_2 data we also show that the breaking of the Wandzura--Wilczek relation can be as large as 15--30% of the size of g_2.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1126-6708/2009/11/093/pdf

What can break the Wandzura-Wilczek relation?

In this review we address the dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion reactions and in particular the information obtained from electromagnetic probes that stem from the partonic and hadronic phases. The out-of-equilibrium description of strongly interacting relativistic fields is based on the theory of Kadanoff and Baym. For the modeling of the partonic phase we introduce a dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) for QCD in equilibrium. The widths and masses of the quasiparticles are controlled by transport coefficients in comparison to lattice QCD results. The resulting off-shell transport approach - denoted by Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) - also includes covariant dynamical hadronization and keeps track of the hadronic interactions in the final phase. We show that PHSD captures the bulk dynamics of heavy-ion collisions from SPS to LHC energies and provides a basis for the evaluation of the electromagnetic emissivity, using the same dynamical parton propagators as for the system evolution. Direct photon production in elementary processes and heavy-ion reactions at RHIC and LHC energies is investigated and the status of the photon v2 puzzle - a large elliptic flow of the direct photons observed in A+A collisions - is addressed. We discuss the roles of hadronic and partonic sources for the photon spectra and the flow coefficients v2 and v3 and also the possibility to subtract the QGP signal from observables. Furthermore, the production of dilepton pairs is addressed from SIS to LHC energies. The low-mass dilepton yield is enhanced due to the in-medium modification of the rho-meson and at the lowest energy also due to a multiple regeneration of Delta-resonances. In addition, a signal of the partonic degrees-of-freedom is found in the intermediate dilepton mass regime (1.2GeV<M<3GeV), which can shed light on the nature of the very early degrees-of-freedom in nucleus-nucleus collisions.

Effective QCD and transport description of dilepton and photon production in heavy-ion collisions and elementary processes

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of strong interactions of quarks and gluons collectively called partons, the basic constituents of all nuclear matter. Its non-abelian character manifests in nature in the form of two remarkable properties: color confinement and asymptotic freedom. At high energies, perturbation theory can result in the growth and dominance of very gluon densities at small-x. If left uncontrolled, this growth can result in gluons eternally growing violating a number of mathematical bounds. The resolution to this problem lies by balancing gluon emissions by recombinating gluons at high energies: phenomena of gluon saturation. High energy nuclear and particle physics experiments have spent the past decades quantifying the structure of protons and nuclei in terms of their fundamental constituents confirming predicted extraordinary behavior of matter at extreme density and pressure conditions. In the process they have also measured seemingly unexpected phenomena. We will give a state of the art review of the underlying theoretical and experimental tools and measurements pertinent to gluon saturation physics. We will argue for the need of high energy electron-proton/ion colliders such as the proposed EIC (USA) and LHeC (Europe) to consolidate our knowledge of QCD knowledge in the small x kinematic domains.

Mining for Gluon Saturation at Colliders

The proposed high-energy and high-luminosity Electron–Ion Collider (EIC) will provide one of the cleanest environments to precisely determine the nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) in a wide x –Q 2 range. Heavy flavor production at the EIC provides access to nPDFs in the poorly constrained high Bjorken-x region, allows us to study the quark and gluon fragmentation processes, and constrains parton energy loss in cold nuclear matter. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are developing a new physics program to study heavy flavor production, flavor tagged jets, and heavy flavor hadron-jet correlations in the nucleon/nucleus going direction at the future EIC. The proposed measurements will provide a unique way to explore the flavor dependent fragmentation functions and energy loss in a heavy nucleus. They will constrain the initial-state eﬀects that are critical for the interpretation of previous and ongoing heavy ion measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider. We show an initial conceptual design of the proposed Forward Silicon Tracking (FST) detector at the EIC, which is essential to carry out the heavy flavor measurements. We further present initial feasibility studies/simulations of heavy flavor hadron reconstruction using the proposed FST.

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A New Heavy Flavor Program for the Future Electron-Ion Collider

Quarks and gluons are the fundamental constituents of nucleons. Their interactions rather than their mass, is responsible for $99\%$ of the mass of all visible matter in the universe. Measuring the fundamental properties of matter has had a large impact on our understanding of the nucleon structure and it has given us decades of research and technological innovation. Despite the large number of discoveries made, many fundamental questions remain open and in need of a new and more precise generation of measurements. The future Electron Ion Collider (EIC) will be a machine dedicated to hadron structure research. It will study the content of protons and neutrons in a largely unexplored regime in which gluons are expected to dominate and eventually saturate. While the EIC will be the machine of choice to quantify this regime, recent surprising results from the heavy ion community begin to exhibit similar signatures as those expected from a regime dominated by gluons. Many of the heavy ion results that will be discussed in this document highlight the kinematic limitations of hadron-hadron and hadron-nucleus collisions. The reliability of using as a reference proton-proton (pp) and proton-Nucleus(pA) collisions to quantify and disentangle vacuum and Cold Nuclear Matter (CNM) effects from a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) may be under question. An selection of relevant pp and pA results which highlight the need of an EIC will be presented

Nuclear physics at the energy frontier: recent heavy ion results from the perspective of the Electron Ion Collider

The polarized proton beams at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory provide a unique environment to observe hard scattering between gluons and quarks. The PHENIX experiment has recorded collisions at $\sqrt(s_{NN})=$200 GeV and 62.4 GeV to yield data which are complementary to those measured by deep inelastic scattering experiments. Polarized proton-proton collisions can directly probe the polarized gluon and anti-quark distributions as the collisions couple the color charges of the participants. The PHENIX detector is well suited to measure many final-state particles sensitive to the proton's spin structure. We will give a brief overview of the PHENIX Spin Program and we will report results, status and outlook of the many probes accessible to the PHENIX experiment which will be incorporated into future global analyses of world data on polarized hard scattering.

Spin Results From the PHENIX Detector at RHIC

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will explore several fundamental questions in a broad Bjorken-x ($x_{BJ}$) and $Q^{2}$ phase space. Heavy flavor and jet products are ideal probes to precisely study the tomography of nucleon/nuclei structure, help solve the proton spin puzzle and understand the hadronizaton processes in vacuum or in the QCD medium. Due to the asymmetric collisions at the EIC, most of the final state hadrons are produced in the nucleon/nuclei beam going (forward) direction. A silicon vertex/tracking is critical to precisely measure these forward hadrons at the EIC. Details of different conceptual designs of the proposed Forward Silicon Tracker (FST) and the relevant detector performance are presented in this technical note. The associated heavy flavor and jet studies with the evaluated FST performance are discussed as well.

Astrid Morreale

Papers

Mining for Gluon Saturation at Colliders

A New Heavy Flavor Program for the Future Electron-Ion Collider

Nuclear physics at the energy frontier: recent heavy ion results from the perspective of the Electron Ion Collider

Spin Results From the PHENIX Detector at RHIC

A Proposed Forward Silicon Tracker for the Future Electron-Ion Collider and Associated Physics Studies