Canadian Participation in the Electron-Ion Collider

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The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a major new collider facility to be built on Long Island, NY, by the US Department of Energy in this decade. At the EIC, polarized electrons will collide with polarized protons, polarized light ions, and heavy nuclei at intensities far beyond what is currently available. The facility will answer fundamental questions central to our understanding of atoms, and integral to the agenda of nuclear physics today. - How does the mass of the nucleon arise? - How does the spin of the nucleon arise? - What are the emergent properties of dense systems of gluons? - What is the composition of exotic hadrons? The EIC project achieved two milestones in 2019-2020, with the first critical decision (CD-0) establishing mission need, and with the site selection of Brookhaven National Lab. The project aims to complete the next three critical decisions by the end of 2023, and to start operations by 2030. The EIC Users Group is coordinating the international efforts to instrument the two collider interaction regions. Canadian subatomic physicists have participated intensively in the planning of this new facility and have chartered a multi-institutional EIC Canada Collaboration to coordinate participation. Members of the EIC Canada Collaboration are involved in the Steering Committee and in other working groups of the EIC Users Group. This proposal requests support for investigators and HQP in the EIC Canada Collaboration for a period of two years. Due the rapid pace at which the EIC project is ramping up, we are requesting support in two years increments so as to allow for frequent re-evaluation of the optimal level of support. In this two year project period we will support two M.Sc. students at the University of Regina, two M.Sc. students at the University of Manitoba, and four undergraduate research students at Mount Allison University. These students will: - determine whether measurements of the K+ form factor in electroproduction will be a feasible probe of emergent mass generation in hadrons, - revisit earlier studies of electroweak mixing angle measurements with updated performance parameters for the anticipated detectors, - develop a conceptual design for electron detection in Compton polarimetry, - build event generators to study photoproduction of XYZ states by examining channel sensitivity, - contribute to simulations and the conceptual development of calorimetry. The four M.Sc. and four undergraduate research students will not work in isolation; they will be in contact through regular virtual and in-person EIC Canada meetings. The students will be represented in the collaboration in a dedicated junior research committee established as part of our Code of Conduct. By engaging students in the activities of the EIC, we will prepare them for future careers inside and outside research. In particular, the M.Sc. students will be well prepared for Ph.D. positions on EIC, which are scheduled to ramp up in the next few years.