Realizing the Scientific Program with Polarized Ion Beams at EIC
Abstract
Polarized ion beams at the Electron Ion Collider are essential to address some of the most important open questions at the twenty-first century frontiers of understanding of the fundamental structure of matter. Here, we summarize the science case and identify polarized H, He, Li and Li ion beams as critical technology that will enable experiments which address the most important science. Further, we discuss the required ion polarimetry and spin manipulation in EIC. The current EIC accelerator design is presented. We identify a significant R\&D effort involving both national laboratories and universities that is required over about a decade to realize the polarized ion beams and estimate (based on previous experience) that it will require about 20 FTE over 10 years (or a total of about 200 FTE-years) of personnel, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, technicians and engineers. Attracting, educating and training a new generation of physicists in experimental spin techniques will be essential for successful realization. AI/ML is seen as having significant potential for both acceleration of R\&D and amplification of discovery in optimal realization of this unique quantum technology on a cutting-edge collider. The R\&D effort is synergistic with research in atomic physics and fusion energy science.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.10794,
title = {Realizing the Scientific Program with Polarized Ion Beams at EIC},
author = {Grigor Atoian and Nigel Buttimore and Giuseppe Ciullo and Ian Cloet and Marco Contalbrigo and Jaydeep Datta and Abhay Deshpande and Shubham Dutta and Oleg Eyser and Muhammad Farooq and Renee Fatemi and Ishara Fernando and Michael Finger and Wolfram Fischer and Dave Gaskell and Prakash Gautam and Ralf Gebel and Boxing Gou and Daoning Gu and Yoshitaka Hatta and Mohammad Hattawy and Volker Hejny and Kiel Hock and Georg Hoffstaetter and Haixin Huang and Christopher Ianzano and Jiangyong Jia and Andro Kacharava and Maggie Kerr and Wolfgang Korsch and Dario Lattuada and Andreas Lehrach and Minxiang Li and Xiaqing Li and Paolo Lenisa and Win Lin and James Maxwell and Aleksei Melnikov and Zein-Eddine Meziani and Richard G. Milner and William R. Milner and Iurii Mitrankov and Hamlet Mkrtchyan and Prajwal MohanMurthy and Christoph Montag and Sergei Nagaitsev and Charles-Joseph Naim and Alexander Nass and Dien Nguyen and Nikolai Nikolaev and Luciano Pappalardo and Chao Peng and Anna Piccoli and Andrei Poblaguev and Deepak Raparia and Frank Rathmann and Thomas Roser and Premkumar Saganti and Andrew Sandorfi and Medani Sangroula and Vincent Schoefer and Yousif Shabaan El-Feky and Rahul Shankar and Vera Shmakova and Evgeny Shulga and Jamal Slim and Dannie Steski and Bernd Surrow and Noah Wuerfel and Yaojie Zhai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.10794},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
47 pages, 24 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev. C (PRC)