Speaker
Description
One of the major goals of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is to better understand nuclear structure at high energy. A principal measurement is coherent exclusive vector meson (VM) production in diffractive e + A collisions. The gluon spatial distribution inside the nucleus can be obtained through a Fourier transform of the nuclear momentum transfer (|t|) distribution for these vector mesons. However, the |t| distribution is one of the most challenging measurements at the EIC. There are two main obstacles in this measurement that this research aims to overcome: limited precision in measuring |t| and large background from incoherent events that govern most of the |t| regime, making it difficult to resolve the diffractive pattern from coherent events. We employ a method for reconstructing |t| by utilizing the electron beam polarization in e + A collisions and measuring the projected |t| distribution to overcome those complications. This technique will allow us to statistically separate incoherent and coherent events and precisely measure the diffractive pattern, providing a potential solution for a critical measurement that is difficult for the EIC baseline detector. Through the study of diffractive vector meson production, we carry out an experimental simulation of how the detector effect would change the extracted nuclear geometry and how to use projective techniques to avoid defects. Previous methods for studying heavy-ion collisions can be applied to investigate exclusive VM production in this research. This would be informative for EIC experimental measurements in the future.
