Speaker
Description
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will be the next major facility to study the smallest building blocks of matter and their interactions. This facility will collide spin-polarized electrons and nuclei, thus providing new opportunities to study the spin structure of nucleons. Given the expected performance of the facility, we simulated polarized electron-proton and electron-Helium 3 collisions using double-tagging, an innovative approach resulting in improved precision for neutron data. These projections provide the expected precision for measurements of the inclusive spin-structure functions of the proton and neutron. To increase the kinematic coverage and improve the accuracy of this study, we use a parameterization from existing experimental data. We integrate over quark momentum to obtain the proton and neutron spin structure function moments with their respective experimental uncertainties. Then employ a Monte-Carlo approach to determine the systematic uncertainty. Forming Bjorken sums from the moments, we fit the sums using a series representation of the Bjorken Sum Rule to obtain the value and uncertainty for the coupling of the strong nuclear force, α_s. Improved experimental methodologies paired with improved theoretical calculations permit the extraction of α_s with a relative precision of 1.3 percent, competitive with the most precise global analyses on world data for Deep-Inelastic Scattering.
