Session 3WJA: The ePIC Experimental Program at the EIC I

Investigation of the proton structure at the future Electron-Ion collider

The investigation of the proton internal structure in high energy scatterings has been one of the central subjects in basic science since quantum chromodynamics(QCD) was established as a fundamental theory of the strong interaction. A lot of knowledge has been accumulated in the past half century through the perturbative QCD analysis of experimental data. However, in spite of tremendous theoretical and experimental effort, a lot of mysteries still lie in the proton structure. In particular, the role of gluons inside the proton is leaving a lot of room for research. The measurement of the gluon spin performed by RHIC is one of the most important fundamental progresses made in the past couple of decades. Further investigation will be inherited by the next-generation EIC experiment. In this talk, I will review the current status of our understanding about the proton structure and discuss what we can do at the EIC.   

EIC Physics II: The Nucleus

The electron-ion collider will be the first high-energy collider with (polarized) electron and light to heavy ion beams. I will give an overview of the physics program at the EIC using light and heavy ions and how the unique capabilities of the ePIC detector will enable this. This program includes precision measurement of nuclear pdfs, determination of neutron structure using light nuclei, the determination of the gluon saturation regime in eA collisions, studies of the influence of nuclear interactions on partonic properties, hadronization in the medium and more!   

The ePIC Detector: Experimental Program

The ePIC detector is designed to be a general-purpose detector for the EIC's diverse physics program. To meet the demands of several different and sometimes competing experimental measurements, it is necessary to study the relevant physical processes in detail. Central issues for the physics program include the search for 3D internal structures to understand the origin of nucleon mass and spin, and the discovery of gluon saturation inside nuclei and the study of its emergent properties. To accommodate a very diverse physics program, in addition to inclusive and semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes, we also measure deep virtual Compton scattering and meson production processes as exclusive processes for electron + proton collisions and diffraction processes for electron + heavy ion collisions. This talk will present the physics program of the ePIC experiment and discuss challenges to the detector design to achieve the program.