Session 1WA: Physics Opportunities with EIC I

Overview of the Electron-Ion Collider

An overview of the scientific motivation for the U.S.-based Electron-Ion Collider will be presented. This drives a set of EIC accelerator specifications that will be described. The current status of EIC accelerator designs will be presented. Finally, a plausible path to realization will be outlined.   

Exploring Meson Structure with Tagged Structure Functions

Experimental knowledge of the partonic structure of light mesons is very limited due to the lack of stable mesonic targets. New experimental techniques are being developed to create effective pion, kaon, and other targets from tagged nucleon and nuclear targets and beams. The effective tagged meson targets in particular open the opportunity to uniquely probe the structure and composition of the nucleon sea. Measurements of the light mesons' partonic structure, moreover, offer fundamental insights into questions of how mass and structure arise in hadronic systems. A description of tagged deep inelastic structure function experiments driving an anticipated program for the Electron-Ion Collider will be presented.   

Nuclear femtography as a bridge from protons and neutrons to the core of neutron stars

In this talk I will address how the science of Nuclear Femtography, probed by deeply virtual exclusive electron nucleon scattering, has revolutionized our approach to exploring the internal structure of the nucleon. Current and planned experiments at the future EIC could in principle allow us to use all the information from data and phenomenology, on one side, to form tomographic images of the nucleon's quark and gluon distributions and, on the other, to reveal the nucleon's internal structure by measuring mechanical properties such as the quark angular momentum, energy density and pressure distributions. While this information is critical for ultimately understanding the working of the color forces, it also defines a new area of research where the fundamental gravitational properties of protons, neutrons and nuclei can be tested through recent astronomical observations constraining the neutron stars equation of state.