Electron Ion Collider transverse spin physics

TL;DR

This paper discusses the role of Transverse Momentum Dependent Distributions (TMDs) in understanding the three-dimensional structure of nucleons at the future Electron Ion Collider, focusing on spin-related functions like Sivers and transversity.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of TMDs, especially Sivers and transversity, in studying nucleon spin structure through polarized SIDIS experiments at the EIC.

Findings

Sivers distribution describes unpolarised quarks in transversely polarised nucleons.

Transversity measures transversely polarised quark distributions.

TMDs are key to mapping nucleon spin structure.

Abstract

Electron Ion Collider is a future high energy facility for studies of the structure of the nucleon. Three-dimensional parton structure is one of the main goals of EIC. In momentum space Transverse Momentum Dependent Distributions (TMDs) are the key ingredients to map such a structure. At leading twist spin structure of spin-1/2 hadron can be described by 8 TMDs. Experimentally these functions can be studied in polarised SIDIS experiments. We discuss Sivers distribution function that describes distribution of unpolarised quarks in a transversely polarised nucleon and transversity that measures distribution of transversely polarised quarks in a transversely polarised nucleon.