Helicity Parton Distributions at a Future Electron-Ion Collider: A Quantitative Appraisal

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how a future electron-ion collider could improve the understanding of the proton's spin structure by analyzing simulated deep-inelastic scattering data with advanced QCD methods.

Contribution

It provides a detailed quantitative forecast of the collider's potential impact on helicity parton distribution functions using next-to-leading order global analyses.

Findings

Enhanced precision in helicity quark and gluon density determinations.

Significant reduction in uncertainties of proton spin contributions.

Demonstrated the collider's capability to resolve current ambiguities in spin structure.

Abstract

We present a quantitative assessment of the impact a future electron-ion collider will have on determinations of helicity quark and gluon densities and their contributions to the proton spin. Our results are obtained by performing a series of global QCD analyses at next-to-leading order accuracy based on realistic sets of pseudo-data for the inclusive and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons and protons at different, conceivable center-of-mass system energies.