Speaker
Description
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), with ePIC as its first general-purpose detector, will deliver high-impact measurements during its first year of operation. Even before reaching full design luminosity and beam energy, anticipated early running configurations will provide broad opportunities in electron-proton and electron-ion collisions.
This presentation will summarize the projected early-science reach of ePIC, based on full Geant4 detector simulations. Inclusive DIS measurements will constrain proton and nuclear structure functions, parton distribution functions, and the strong coupling constant. Polarized beams will extend spin-structure studies into new kinematic regions, while semi-inclusive measurements will provide access to transverse-momentum-dependent distributions and fragmentation functions. Exclusive, diffractive, and tagged processes will probe spatial imaging, gluon dynamics, and nuclear structure, complemented by jet and heavy-flavor measurements of hadronization and cold nuclear matter effects.
These early measurements directly address the EIC science pillars: the origin of nucleon mass, the origin of nucleon spin, and dense gluonic matter. They will deliver impactful QCD results while establishing the basis for the full EIC physics program.