Eur. Phys. J. A (2016) 52: 268
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2016-16268-9

Review

Electron-Ion Collider: The next QCD frontier

Understanding the glue that binds us all

¹ Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA
² CUNY, Baruch College, New York, NY, USA
³ Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA
⁴ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
⁵ The Catholic University of America, N.E. Washington, DC, USA
⁶ Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
⁷ CEA, Centre de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁸ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
⁹ Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
¹⁰ Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
¹¹ DESY, Hamburg, Germany
¹² Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
¹³ FIAS, Frankfurt University, Frankfurt, Germany
¹⁴ Hampton University, Hampton, VA, USA
¹⁵ LNF, INFN, Frascati, Italy
¹⁶ IPNO, Université Paris-Sud 11, CNRS/IN2P3, Orsay, France
¹⁷ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
¹⁸ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹⁹ The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
²⁰ Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
²¹ Pennsylvania State University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
²² Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
²³ Shandong University, Shandong, China
²⁴ Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA, USA
²⁵ Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA
²⁶ Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
²⁷ Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
²⁸ Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News, VA, USA
²⁹ INFN, Torino University, Torino, Italy
³⁰ University of Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain
³¹ University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
³² University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
³³ University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
³⁴ University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland
³⁵ University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
³⁶ University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
³⁷ University of Santiago de Campostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
³⁸ Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaıso, Chile
³⁹ University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
⁴⁰ University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Received: 21 March 2016
Accepted: 7 June 2016
Published online: 8 September 2016

Abstract

This White Paper presents the science case of an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), focused on the structure and interactions of gluon-dominated matter, with the intent to articulate it to the broader nuclear science community. It was commissioned by the managements of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) with the objective of presenting a summary of scientific opportunities and goals of the EIC as a follow-up to the 2007 NSAC Long Range plan. This document is a culmination of a community-wide effort in nuclear science following a series of workshops on EIC physics over the past decades and, in particular, the focused ten-week program on “Gluons and quark sea at high energies” at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Fall 2010. It contains a brief description of a few golden physics measurements along with accelerator and detector concepts required to achieve them. It has been benefited profoundly from inputs by the users’ communities of BNL and JLab. This White Paper offers the promise to propel the QCD science program in the US, established with the CEBAF accelerator at JLab and the RHIC collider at BNL, to the next QCD frontier.