The electron-ion collider as a next-generation facility for the study of QCD

The electron-ion collider, EIC, has been identified as the top new construction project by the 2016 long range plan of the nuclear science advisory council in the US. Since then the US department of energy office of science has ordered a review of the science case by the national academy of sciences. The report is expected to be made public before the DNP/JPS fall meeting and is generally expected to be quite favorable. This will then lead to the mission need statement by the DOE and start the formal process to build an EIC. At present there are two proposals either augmenting the existing polarized proton and heavy Ion accelerator at Brookhaven National Lab with a polarized electron ring or add a polarized hadron machine to the existing CEBAF facility. The physics goals of an EIC are versatile, from precision measurements of the spin structure of the nucleon, over the three dimensional position and momentum picture of the nucleon to the potential discovery of a new regime at very high gluon densities in nucleii.
In this presentation I will give an outline of the physics goals of an EIC, how they are going to be realized by the two accelerator proposals and the detector needs to perform the key measurements.