Understanding hadronic mass through light meson structure at the EIC

Abstract

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a new US $2 billion high-luminosity accelerator that is expected to be operational at BrookhavenNational Laboratory (BNL), USAat the beginning of the next decade [1]. One of the main goals of the EIC is to understand the origin of hadronic mass, this is the majority of visible mass (¡99%) in the universe. Based on current understanding, it is known that the mass of these systems is intricately connected to their internal structure. To understand this structure, and therefore these hadronic mass generation mechanisms, one of the simplest ways to examine the lightest hadronic systems such as mesons (composed of a quark and anti-quark pair). The main focus of this research project is to study the light mesons (in particular kaon, ¸) through Deep Exclusive Meson Production (DEMP) reactions. This work includes upgrading a bespoke Monte-Carlo event generator, called DEMPgen [2], with a separate new module to investigate the feasibility studies of the kaon electroproduction reactions at the EIC. It involves the selection of a theoretical model to parameterize the various components of the cross-section over a wide range of EIC kinematics, implementation of the parameterization into an event generator with new techniques to calculate the total differential cross-section for the events, and configuration of all modules together to look for any errors and bugs. It also entails assuring improved computational efficiency, readability, and stability with reduced computational time to enable greater statistics for future studies. All these modifications in DEMPgen are required to conduct the feasibility studies of DEMP k⁺at the EIC.