Probing Nuclear Structure and Dynamics at the Electron-Ion Collider

In January 2020, the United States Department of Energy announced that the Brookhaven National Laboratory will be the site for a new cutting-edge accelerator facility called the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Particle physics at the EIC will involve electron-nucleus collisions as a means of probing nuclear structure and dynamics of the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. To contribute to a world-wide effort of investigating subatomic structure at the EIC, we simulate hundreds of millions of electron-nucleus collisions using a Monte Carlo simulation program called PYTHIA. The EIC will use the deep inelastic scattering (DIS) process, where a high energy electron beam is used to shatter a nuclear target. The resulting collision releases energetic, collimated sprays of particle debris known as ``jets". These emerging jets allow us to probe the internal structure and dynamics of the quarks and gluons within protons and neutrons. In this project, we are particularly interested in a quantity that characterizes the pattern of jets known as ``1-jettiness". This project is a study for constraining nuclear parton distribution functions using 1-jettiness at the EIC. We present simulation results for the proposed kinematics at the EIC and compare to theoretical predictions.