English

Nuclear Fragmentation at the Future Electron-Ion Collider

Nuclear Theory 2025-04-15 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

We explore the potential of conducting low-energy nuclear physics studies, including nuclear structure and decay, at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven. By comparing the standard theory of electron-nucleus scattering with the equivalent photon method applied to Ultraperipheral Collisions (UPC) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In the limit of extremely high beam energies and small energy transfers, very transparent equations emerge. We apply these equations to analyze nuclear fragmentation in UPCs at the LHC and eAeA scattering at the EIC, demonstrating that the EIC could facilitate unique photonuclear physics studies. However, we have also shown that the fragmentation cross-sections at the EIC are about 1,000 times smaller than those at the LHC. At the LHC, the fragmentation of uranium nuclei displays characteristic double-hump mass distributions from fission events, while at the EIC, fragmentation is dominated by neutron emission and fewer few fission products, about 10,000 smaller number of events.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.10157,
  title  = {Nuclear Fragmentation at the Future Electron-Ion Collider},
  author = {C. A. Bertulani and Y. Kucuk and F. S. Navarra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.10157},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Matches published version, Nuclear Physics A 1059, 123093 (2025)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:17:03.385Z