Session P03: Highlights of New Results and Future Nuclear Physics Facilities

Status of the MUSE experiment

In 2010, high-precision studies of muonic hydrogen found notably smaller values for the charge radius than earlier results that have been extracted from elastic electron-scattering data and through the spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen. The MUon Scattering Experiment (MUSE) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) has been developed to address this so-called proton-radius puzzle. The experiment will measure elastic electron-proton and muon-proton scattering data with positively and negatively charged beams in a four-momentum-transfer range from 0.002 to 0.08 GeV2. Each of the four sets of data will allow the extraction of the proton charge radius. In combination, the data test possible differences between the electron and muon interactions and two-photon exchange effects. The status of the experiment, with a focus on radiative corrections, will be discussed.   

Electron-Ion Collider: Understanding the Glue that Binds All

The Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is a new facility in the United States that will be capable of colliding electrons with protons and nuclei at high energies and high luminosities, which will allow probing nucleon and nuclei structure with unprecedented precision. The EIC will address some of the most profound questions concerning the emergence of nuclear properties by precisely imaging gluons and quarks inside protons and nuclei such as their distributions in space and momentum, their role in building the nucleon spin and the properties of gluons in nuclei at high energies. This presentation will describe the EIC, highlight its science capabilities, and discuss its detectors.

    

MPGD-Based Transition Radiation Detector for Tracking and Electron ID at the EIC

Success of scientific goals at future high energy nuclear physics experiments relies on increasingly precise measurements; the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is the forthcoming collider designed to address unanswered questions in this field. Micro-Pattern Gas Detectors (MPGDs), planned for use in the EIC, are robust particle tracking devices; extensive R&D is ongoing to advance current limitations and designs. As tracking instruments, MPGDs do not perform particle identification (PID); transition radiation detectors (TRDs) are widely used for electron (e) ID, which can signal rare physics and provide access to processes of interest.

My research involves the design, build, and testing of an innovative MPGD tracker integrated with a TRD in an effort to extend MPGD usage to e ID. A prototype of this hybrid detector has been built at VU and tested at JLab; I will present on its design and operation, and show preliminary studies on quantifying its performance. I will also describe future planned studies, including simulation in the EIC detector software framework to evaluate how the performance changes when MPGD-TRD is included in the large-scale experiment. A high-granularity tracker combined with a TRD may provide a cost-effective option for enhancing e ID in next generation colliders.   

A realistic event generator for studies of coherent J/psi photoproduction off light nuclei at the EIC

An important part of the design and design verification of detectors for the future U.S. Electron Ion Collider(EIC) is performing simulation studies of detector resolutions and expected yields. Realistic event generators for reactions of interest are being used to provide input events for the simulations. Coherent J/psi photoproduction is an important tool for gluon imaging of nucleons and nuclei. While this process has been extensively studied for protons and heavy nuclei at the EIC, not much has been done for light nuclei. In this work, we implemented new methods in an existing phase-space generator to produce events for coherent J/psi photoproduction in collisions of an electron and a light ion beam distributed according to the charge form factor of the nucleus. Theoretical calculations of charge form factors for He3, He4, Li6, C12, and O12 for discrete values of momentum transfer were saved in numerical tables and used as input. The generator allows the user to select either the hit-and-miss or the simple integration method for event sampling. In this presentation, we will show generated event samples for various nuclei and beam energies according to each method and will discuss future developments.