The electron-ion collider: assessing the energy dependence of key measurements.

We provide an assessment of the energy dependence of key measurements within the scope of the machine parameters for a US based electron-ion collider (EIC) outlined in the EIC White Paper. We first examine the importance of the physics underlying these measurements in the context of the outstanding questions in nuclear science. We then demonstrate, through detailed simulations of the measurements, that the likelihood of transformational scientific insights is greatly enhanced by making the energy range and reach of the EIC as large as practically feasible.

Ballistic protons in incoherent exclusive vector meson production as a measure of rare parton fluctuations at an electron-ion collider.

We argue that the proton multiplicities measured in Roman pot detectors at an electron ion collider can be used to determine centrality classes in incoherent diffractive scattering. Incoherent diffraction probes the fluctuations in the interaction strengths of multiparton Fock states in the nuclear wave functions. In particular, the saturation scale that characterizes this multiparton dynamics is significantly larger in central events relative to minimum bias events. As an application, we study the centrality dependence of incoherent diffractive vector meson production. We identify an observable which is simultaneously very sensitive to centrality triggered parton fluctuations and insensitive to details of the model.