Simulation of the neutron-tagged deep inelastic scattering at EicC

TL;DR

This paper assesses the feasibility of measuring the pion structure function via neutron-tagged deep inelastic scattering at EicC, demonstrating high-precision potential with minimal detector modifications.

Contribution

It presents a simulation study showing that EicC can precisely measure the pion structure function across a broad kinematic range with simple detector upgrades.

Findings

High statistical precision in the low-Q^2 region (<10 GeV^2)

Coverage of x_pi from 0.01 to 1, Q^2 from 1 to 50 GeV^2

Minimal detector addition needed (far-forward neutron calorimeter)

Abstract

Measuring the pionic structure function is of high interests as it provides a new area for understanding the strong interaction among quarks and testing the QCD predictions. To this purpose, we investigate the feasibility and the expected impacts of a possible experiment on EicC. We show the simulation results on the statistical precision of an EicC measurement, based on the model of leading neutron tagged DIS process and the parton distribution functions of the pion from JAM18 global analysis. The simulation shows that at EicC, the kinematics cover $x_{\pi}$ range from 0.01 to 1, and $Q^2$ range from 1 GeV$^2$ to 50 GeV$^2$, within the acceptable statistical uncertainty. Assuming an integrated luminosity of 50 fb$^{-1}$, in the low-$Q^{2}$ region ($<10$ GeV$^2$), the MC data show that the suggested measurement in the whole $x_{\rm\pi}$ range reaches very high precision ($<3$\%). To perform such an experiment, only the addition of a far-forward neutron calorimeter is needed.