Opportunities for inclusive diffraction at EIC

TL;DR

The paper explores the potential of the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) for advanced inclusive diffraction studies, highlighting its superior capabilities over HERA in kinematic coverage, subleading exchange measurement, and structure function analysis.

Contribution

It demonstrates how EIC's advanced detection and energy configurations can significantly enhance inclusive diffraction measurements compared to previous experiments.

Findings

EIC can access a wider kinematic range than HERA.

EIC enables measurement of subleading diffractive exchanges.

EIC allows precise extraction of 4D reduced cross sections.

Abstract

The possibilities for inclusive diffraction in the Electron Ion Collider, EIC, in the US, are analyzed. We find that thanks to the excellent forward proton tagging, the EIC will be able to access a wider kinematical range of longitudinal momentum fraction and momentum transfer of the leading proton than at HERA. This opens up the possibility to measure subleading diffractive exchanges. The extended $t$-range would allow the precise extraction of 4-dimensional reduced cross section in diffraction. In addition, the varying beam energy setups at the EIC would allow for precise measurements of the longitudinal diffractive structure function.