A Proposed Forward Silicon Tracker for the Future Electron-Ion Collider and Associated Physics Studies

TL;DR

This paper proposes a forward silicon tracker design for the Electron-Ion Collider to enhance detection of forward-produced hadrons, enabling detailed studies of nucleon structure, spin, and hadronization processes.

Contribution

It introduces conceptual designs of a Forward Silicon Tracker tailored for the EIC, with performance evaluations for heavy flavor and jet physics studies.

Findings

FST design improves forward hadron detection accuracy

Enhanced capability for heavy flavor and jet measurements

Supports detailed nucleon/nuclei structure analysis

Abstract

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will explore several fundamental questions in a broad Bjorken-x ($x_{BJ}$) and $Q^{2}$ phase space. Heavy flavor and jet products are ideal probes to precisely study the tomography of nucleon/nuclei structure, help solve the proton spin puzzle and understand the hadronizaton processes in vacuum or in the QCD medium. Due to the asymmetric collisions at the EIC, most of the final state hadrons are produced in the nucleon/nuclei beam going (forward) direction. A silicon vertex/tracking is critical to precisely measure these forward hadrons at the EIC. Details of different conceptual designs of the proposed Forward Silicon Tracker (FST) and the relevant detector performance are presented in this technical note. The associated heavy flavor and jet studies with the evaluated FST performance are discussed as well.