Speaker
Description
A high-luminosity polarized Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) has been recommended for future construction in the 2015 NSAC Long-Range Plan. This facility will enable a next-generation physics program aimed at exploring the three-dimensional structure of the nucleon in QCD (spin, spatial distributions, orbital motion), the dynamics of quarks and gluons in nuclei (nuclear interactions, quark/gluon densities, gluon saturation), and the emergence of hadrons from energetic color charge (color propagation, fragmentation, hadronization). An overview of the physics program and the present facility designs will be given. Emphasis will be placed on EIC measurements that directly impact on the identified topics of the MENU conference, such as meson-nucleon interactions (e.g. chiral dynamics in partonic structure, peripheral high-energy processes), few-body systems (e.g. high-energy scattering from polarized light nuclei, nuclear breakup), and hadron spectroscopy (e.g. heavy flavor production, quarkonia). The goal will be to make the scientific community at MENU aware of the potential of EIC for hadronic physics and engage it in the further development of the physics program.
