Neutron structure with (un)polarized deuterons and forward spectator tagging at the Electron-Ion Collider

Conference · Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2015

OSTI ID:1970245

Park, Kijun ^[1]; Hyde, Charles ^[2]; Weiss, Christian ^[3]; Higinbotham, Douglas ^[3]; Nadel-Turonski, Pawel ^[4]

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1. Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (United States); Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
2. Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (United States)
3. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
4. Stony Brook, State University of New York

An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) would enable novel measurements of neutron structure through deep-inelastic electron-deuteron scattering with coincidence tagging of the forward-moving spectator proton. The free neutron structure functions can be obtained by extrapolating the measured recoil momentum distributions to the on-shell point. Such measurements provide essential information for the flavor separation of the nucleon parton densities, the nucleon spin decomposition, and precision studies of QCD evolution in the flavor-singlet and nonsinglet sectors. The EMC effect in light nuclei can be elucidated by measuring the recoil momentum dependence of the nuclear modification. A Jefferson Lab LDRD project has supported a study of neutron structure measurements with spectator tagging at an EIC, with Monte Carlo simulation of the physical processes and the accelerator and detector requirements. We present results of a model-independent extraction of the free neutron structure function $$F_2^n$$, as well as the spin structure function $$g_1^n$$, through on-shell extrapolation in the spectator momentum.

• Research Organization: Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-06OR23177
• OSTI ID: 1970245
• Report Number(s): JLAB-PHY-15-2359; DOE/OR/23177-6066
• Resource Relation: Conference: American Physical Society, APS April Meeting 2015, April
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English